It should be pointed out that there are a few inconsistencies as noted below. In some years the title of entries that were explicitly listed were linked to but as the README.md files no longer have the title it was not as easy to locate the title (I could go back in archive/historic and I did in some cases but I was trying to hurry this up to close #3). It's most likely that some have backticks surrounding certain words like gcc or something else but not in all files. An example that might be there is '#define'. Some wording is different. Usually this is due to the original wording which I did not think was good to change. There might be other cases that were missed as well. One thing is that comes to mind is that in some README.md files it refers to the Makefile to check for build instructions, in others it refers to the index.html file and in some it refers to both. But the index.html has how to build so they should probably all say index.html and not refer to the Makefile. This was also done in a rush. There might be other inconsistencies or things that might want to be fixed but whether it's worth it given is unclear at this time. It can be argued that the reference to the Makefiles for build instructions is a historical comment to keep there as an example of why not to change it. There were other things I noticed that I could not address or did not feel were necessary but with this commit an important task is can likely be considered done unless it is decided that some of these should be fixed or if looking at the rendered output there is a problem.
Tenth International Obfuscated C Code Contest
View the index.html web page for the given winning entry for information on how
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.
Use make to compile entries. It is possible that on BSD or non-Unix
systems the Makefile needs to be changed. See the Makefiles and/or README.md
(that are used to build the index.html web page) files for details.
Read over the Makefile and/or README.md files for compile/build issues. Your
system may require certain changes (add or remove a library, add or remove a
#define i.e. the -D flag).
Name and address information are separated from the actual program prior to judging. This eliminates any chance that we would bias our judging for/against any person or group.
This year was the first year that ANSI C was the default. Use of classic K&R C was allowed so long as ANSI C compilers could still compile the entry. If you do not have an ANSI C compiler, you may not be able to compile the entry, sorry!
A few notes regarding future contests:
Be sure to wait until the 1994 rules are posted before submitting entries. Rules differ from year to year, sometimes in significant ways.
In 1994, we will retract the guideline that discouraged the use of C
constructs such as 3["curds"]. At one time, certain ANSI compilers did
not consider such expressions to be valid ANSI C. Alert readers noted
that the current ANSI standard considered them to be valid. We were
unable to find an ANSI C compiler that flagged such expressions as
errors.
Please send us comments and suggestions what we have expressed above. Also include anything else that you would like to see in future contests. Send such email to:
...!{sun,pacbell,uunet,pyramid}!hoptoad!judges
judges@toad.com
If you use, distribute or publish these entries in some way, please drop us a line. We enjoy seeing who, where and how the contest is used.
Final Comments
IMPORTANT NOTE: The email addresses found above are for historical purposes only, and should not be used today. 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 addition information on the IOCCC.
Credits:
We would like to thank Barbara Frezza for her role as official chef of the contest. Landon Curt Noll and Larry Bassel appreciated the opportunity to serve as official taste testers. And as usual, the food was excellent.
Copyright and License
Copyright (c) 1993,2023, Landon Curt Noll and Larry Bassel. All Rights Reserved. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons CC BY-SA 4.0 DEED Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. If you do use this work in some form, the IOCCC judges would appreciate (but does not require) if you were to send us a note about your use.