ioccc/2000/tomx

Most Complete Program:

Thomas P John
Mishybi Plamoottil
Parottukonam
Nalanchira P.O, Trivandrum-695015
India

http://tomx.tripod.com/

Judges' Comments:

To build:

make tomx

Try:

rm -f ./tomx
sh tomx.c              
./tomx

If sh is your shell:

rm -f ./tomx
chmod +x ./tomx.c
./tomx.c 
./tomx

Also try:

rm -f ./tomx
make -f tomx.c
./tomx

Polyglots have come and gone, but this was the first one we'd seen
where one language *used* another to perform its tasks.  An interesting
approach.  Admittedly, it's not all that obfuscated - but there's more
to it than you might think, since you have to make sure that your
changes don't change the shell code or the makefile.

Selected Author's Comments:

Summary
-------
This program works as a C source file, a Makefile and also as a
Shell (/bin/sh) script. But unlike some other multi-language prog-
rams, this one is NOT meant to print "Hello, world" in all 3 cases
(At least in the true sense ;-)). The C, make and shell code build
upon each other to create a C program (?) which when executed as a
shell script will compile itself through the C compiler using a
makefile! - Pretty useful, Eh?.

Probably, this is the first entry ever to fully satisfy Rule #1
("Your entry must be a complete program") in the strictest sense;-)

Top 5 reasons (IMHO) why this code is an entry for IOCCC
--------------------------------------------------------
1. A glance at the source itself will tell U that most of the
   Obfuscation is NOT in the C code per se, but in the comments
   to the C code. (But sadly, I could not find an "International
   Obfuscated C COMMENT contest". So I HAD to sent this entry
   here to the IOCCC itself).

2. Of the 3 languages in the source, the least obfuscated is
   C (But again, there was NO obfuscated make/shscript contest)
   (Does this hint for a rule in IOCCC-2001 that the major
   obfuscation should be in C and not elsewhere???. Mmmmm...)

3. Extending Argument #2... Obfuscation done in the C code
   (comments?) create obfuscated code for the other 2 languages.
   This opens new possibilities to be explored in depth in future
   IOCCCs

4. LOOKS like a makefile, WORKS like a shell script and COMPILES
   like a C program

5. Does something useful (See Notes #1, #2)

Notes
-----
1. The program could have been something other than the simple
   "Hello, world" program that it is. It is possible to do
   #include "prog2.c" in the place of the main(), leaving the
   complexities of the C file elsewhere and making this source
   still acceptable to "make" and "sh". The following modif-
   ication to the last few lines will compile IOCCCs famous
   "mkentry.c"

    .PHONY: /* true clean */
    #undef   true
  	#include "mkentry.c"

   Ain't that useful?

2. By extending this program's idea, It is possible to do some
   very interesting things like generating C code on execution
   by adding additional code in  make/sh (open up a loop????).
   This opens the possibilities of generating & compiling some
   [obfuscated?] C code.(Maybe should try this if this program
   fails at IOCCC 2000)

3. Changing the "%:%.c" dependency to a "$(PROG):$(PROG).c" form
   can compile this program with some other make-s (I got it to
   work in Windows using nmake and Gnuwin32's sh ;-)

4. Interesting things to do: try "$ ./tomx.c clean". This will
   do the same as "make clean" :-)). Also: "$ ./tomx.c all"

5. Be careful about the Tabs in the source code. Removing them
   or converting Tabs to spaces can be disasterous