Code Golf: Conway's Game of Life

Answer 1

R 340 chars

cgc<-function(i="in.txt",x=100){
    require(simecol)
    z<-file("in.txt", "rb")
    y<-matrix(data=NA,nrow=40,ncol=80)
    for(i in seq(40)){
        for(j in seq(80)){
            y[i,j]<-ifelse(readChar(z,1) == "X",1,0)
        }
        readChar(z,3)
    }
    close(z)
    init(conway) <- y
    times(conway)<-1:x
    o<-as.data.frame(out(sim(conway))[[100]])
    write.table(o, "out.txt", sep="", row.names=FALSE, col.names=FALSE)
}
cgc()

I feel it's slightly cheating to have an add in package that does the actual automata for you, but I'm going with it cos I still had to thrash around with matricies and stuff to read in the file with 'X' instead of 1.

This is my first 'code golf', interesting....