<p>We answer this question in the affirmative: it <strong>is possible</strong> to smear paint on the wall without creating a valid Perl program. We employ an empirical approach, using optical character recognition (OCR) software, which finds that merely 93% of paint splatters parse as valid Perl. We analyze the properties of paint-splatter Perl programs, and present seven examples of paint splatters which are not valid Perl programs.</p>
<blockquoteclass="twitter-tweet"data-lang="en"><plang="en"dir="ltr">but is it possible to smear paint on the wall without creating valid Perl?</p>— Jake Archibald (@jaffathecake) <ahref="https://twitter.com/jaffathecake/status/1095706032448393217?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 13, 2019</a></blockquote>
<p>Accepted for publication at SIGBOVIK 2019, held April 1st 2019 in Pittsburgh. Winner of a Unwitting Participation Ribbon, “an unwelcome brand we’ve affixed to each paper determined after careful scrutiny to have included a genuine artifact, thereby furthering the admirable causes of open science and fruitful procrastination.”</p>
<p>Read it on <ahref="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZGGNMfmfpWB-DzWS3Jr-YLcRNRjhp3FKS6v0KELxXK8/preview">Google Docs</a> or download a <ahref="2019.pdf">PDF</a>. Or grab the <ahref="http://sigbovik.org/2019/proceedings.pdf">entire SIGBOVIK 2019 proceedings</a>; I’m on page 174.</p>