• Take advantage of short functions. For example, something like (some-function(def a val)a) can be (|(some-function $ $)val). They can be nested too!
• Recursive functions are often shorter than mutable variables.
  • (defn f[a]...)(f a) => ((fn f[a]...)a)
• Use pp instead of print for numbers and quotes
• Often you can use a symbol or keyword instead of a string, e.g. "Fizz" => 'Fizz or :Fizz. Using 'Fizz also means it will work with pp. Symbols and keywords can also be treated as sequences for use with map and similar functions.
  • : by itself is a valid keyword and is 1 byte shorter than the empty string, "".
• Read the docs. There are a lot of useful functions in there.
• A lot of functions take variadic arguments, especially math ones. So you can reuse them, such as (-= i(* 2 x)) => (-= i x x) or (<(pp i)x y)
• Splice is useful, e.g. sum => +;, or you can do string; to join a list, print;, etc.
  • Note that sum does work on strings, which can't be spliced

Looping over arguments

(reduce2|[(f $1)(g $1)](dyn :args))
(map|[(f $)(g $)](drop 1(dyn :args)))
(each a(drop 1(dyn :args))(f a)(g a))

each is good when you have multiple statements and/or nested functions, otherwise map/reduce2 is better. reduce2 avoids the first argument, but is slightly longer and you have to use $1 instead $ which evens up after 4 uses.

Indexing

There's a few different ways to get a value from a data structure such as a tuple:

(ds idx)               # Shortest, but no default and errors when out of range
(idx ds)               # The same but with different execution order I guess
(in ds idx default?)   # Has default, still throws error when out of range, so only good for dictionaries
(get ds idx default?)  # Nil/default when out of range

Related, you can use put on arrays/buffers and it will extend it and fill the empty spaces with nils/null bytes.

Conditionals

(if(cond)x y)          # Short circuits, you can leave the false section out to return nil, needs a truthy or (falsey/nil) condition
(and/or cond x)        # Short circuits, multiple conditions
(case n v x default)   # Short circuits, checks specific values, has default
(in{v x}n default)     # Same as case, but no short circuit
({v x n default}n)     # Same again, but with more whitespace to save though using n twice
([x y]n)               # Needs a numeric 0/1 condition

PEGs

Parsing Expression Grammars may, at first glance, seem too verbose to be useful in code golf. However they can usually be short enough to serve a similar purpose to regular expressions in other languages.

Basic Tips

• peg/find[-all] and peg/replace[-all] have shorter names than their string/-prefixed counterparts, and can always be used instead, even if you're not using more advanced PEG constructs.
• To backtrack, you need to use + (choice). All other constructs are greedy.
• Remember that Janet is a Lisp, and PEGs may be built dynamically.

Examples

Parsing a date:

(def[y m d](peg/match'(5(+(number :d+)1))"2025-09-26"))