Prepare for the winners of **IOCCC28**. > However these are not the 2024 droids you are looking for. :-) The HTML menu (both JavaScript and non-JavaScript) has been updated. The `Status -> Rules and guidelines' have been replaced with two separate menus `Status -> IOCCC rules` and `Status -> IOCCC guidelines`. Added a new top level `social.html` page: built from a new `social.md`. Sorted rules for building specific web pages in the top level `Makefile`. Added `make social` to make the `social.html` page from `social.md`. The `bin/gen-top-html.sh` now is able to process a argument of **social** to process the new top level `social.html` page. Changed `bin/gen-top-html.sh` VERSION from "2.0.0 2025-03-13" to "2.0.1 2025-07-25". Below `About -> Home page` a new `About -> IOCCC social media` menu item as added. Because the menu change touched every HTML file, we changed the general copyright date range for HTML files from "1984-2024" to "1984-2025" due to the extensive changes made for **IOCCC28**. Those markdown files that were modified in 2025 had their copyright date range also changed from "1984-2024" to "1984-2025". Rebuilt tarballs and sitemap due to the extensive HTML rebuilding. Ran `make update` to perform the above.
Third International Obfuscated C Code Contest
View the index.html web page for the given winning entry for information on how
to compile it 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.
The rules for 1986 suggested categories due to the success of the 1985 judging method. The maximum size was increased from 512 to 1024 bytes. Larry Bassel joined as the second official judge.
A poll was taken for the worst code for
BSD and System
V program. The Bourne
Shell (/bin/sh) won for both
systems. The BSD finger
program took third place.
Rules and results were posted to net.lang.c and net.unix-wizards. Micro/Systems Journal started regular publishing of the winning entries. The practice of making first announcement of the winning entries at the Summer USENIX BOF (Birds of a Feather) started this year. A notice was posted to net.announce.
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.