Landon Curt Noll
0bc6c3e413
We quasi-canonicalized markdown links to FAQ entries. **IMPORTANT NOTE**: This is a useful step in completing issue #2417. This commit is consistent with the top level TODO comment requirements. Nevertheless, this changes made by this commit needs to be examined and in some cases improved. A link to an FAQ entry is of the form: ``` FAQ on "[the link text](....faq.html#string)" FAQ on "[the link text](....faq.html#string)" ``` The "FAQ" is at the start of the line, or in rare cases is preceded only by whitespace. The reference to the FAQ starts outside of the markdown link with the string **FAQ ON "**. After the markdown link is a **"** followed by either the end of line or a single punctuation character such as a period or comma. We reduced the size of "the link text" that refer to an FAQ to at most 3 words. In some cases the sentence and/or text surrounding the markdown link to a FAQ may need to be further adjusted to better accommodate this new style. **IMPORTANT NOTE**: References to a FAQ entry are on a separate line. p.s. When linking to the `faq.html` file itself, we use markdown of the form "`the [IOCCC FAQ](..../faq.html)`" and place the word "the" outside of the "IOCCC FAQ" link text. Given the above system (and because references to an FAQ entry is on a separate line), the following command shows links to FAQ entries, sorted by FAQ entry "link #name" so that one may evaluate the way a given FAQ entry is referenced: ```sh find * -name '*.md' -print0 | xargs0 grep -E '^[[:space:]]*FAQ on "' | sed -e 's/^\([^:]*\):\( *FAQ on "[^#]*\)#\([^)]*\)\()".*\)$/#\3\t\1\t\2#\3\4/' | sort ``` The above command shows the value of consistency when it comes to FAQ references. **NOTE**: There are a few differences on how a given FAQ is references. That is probably OK as there is NOT an "total mandate" that all references to a given FAQ must have the same "link text" for example. On the other hand if references to a given FAQ can be identical, that might be helpful. We are certain that in some contexts the "link text" might need to change. Should we decide to change the way FAQ are referenced, we will be able to modify identify and modify them with greater ease.' Examine the changes made by this commit and adjust and/or improve as needed. Performed `make www` to accomplish the above and to test under macOS.
3.3 KiB
Twenty Second International Obfuscated C Code Contest
Standard IOCCC stuff
View the index.html web page for the given winning entry for information on how
compile the entry and how to run the winning program. Look at the winning
source and try to figure how it does what it does! You may then wish to look at
the Author's remarks for even more details.
Some ANSI C compilers are not quite as good as they should be. If yours is lacking, you may need to compile using gcc instead of your local compiler.
The IOCCC has a website and now has a number of international mirrors. The primary website can be found at www.ioccc.org.
Remarks on some of the entries
We believe you will again be impressed with this year's winning entries.
This year, 9 won 15 awards. For the first time in the history of the contest, one person, Yusuke Endoh won 4 times while Adrian Cable won 3 times! It is also worth noting that Chris Mills' last win was in 1993. Welcome back Chris!
We, the judges, were very surprised by this as many of the multiple authors submitted very different styles of entries.
This year was the first time the IOCCC size tool was used. Entries
had to print a value 2053 or less when the -i flag was used.
Several people discovered an undocumented feature in that certain comments such as:
///*
or:
*\
/
were not correctly parsed by the tool. The guidelines stated:
In cases where the above summary and the algorithm implemented by the IOCCC size tool source code conflict, the algorithm implemented by the IOCCC size tool source code is preferred by the judges.
... so this abuse was allowed (and encouraged). The judges hope that the IOCCC size tool author will patch the tool to block this kind of size abuse in future contests.
There were some outstanding entries that did not win. Unfortunately some very good entries lost because they:
- were way way oversized and didn't even attempt to justify their excess by a clever abuse of the rules
- depended on a single obfuscation trick
- could only be run on a particular vendor's platform
- were very similar to previous winning entry
- didn't work as documented
We hope that the authors of some of those entries will fix and resubmit them for the next IOCCC.
There is a risk in submitting an entry that is similar to a well used theme by previous winning entries. Previous entries set a very high bar. A new entry must not only compete against other submissions from the current year but they must also excel over similar previous winning entry in some particularly impressive way.
Final Comments
IMPORTANT NOTE: See contact.html for up to date contact details as well as details on how to provide fixes to any of the entries. See also the IOCCC FAQ for additional information on the IOCCC.