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As a jugde of the International Obfuscated C Code Contest (which is, by the way, accepting submissions until March 31) I (and the 3 other judges) will be in a very delicate position if such an entry is submitted and happens to win. Although, luckily for us, a contest rule requires that the code size must be no more than 3217 bytes in length, the size of data files is not limited, therefore if somebody implements an obfuscated virtual machine that becomes a DeCSS machine if supplied with the appropriate data, and that entry wins, it will be, in my understanding, OK for us to post the entry and leave the details of supplying the data or the instructions on how to modify the supplied data to the author.

They may win an obfuscated code contest or two.

Not a chance. It violates too many of the rules. For example:

2) Your entry must be <= 3217 bytes in length. The number of characters excluding whitespace (tab, space, newline), and excluding any ; { or } immediately followed by whitespace or end of file, must be <= 1536.

Does anyone seriously think any single piece of Windows is this small?

6) The uudecoded ---program--- section must be able to be compiled cleanly by an ANSI C compiler, or if there are any compile errors, they must be documented in the ---remark--- section.

I'm guessing that the Windows source requires a specific version of MS C or Visual C++. It certainly is not portable. And I doubt they could figure out how to uuencode it before the submission deadline.

7) The program must be of original work. All programs must be in the public domain. All copyrighted programs will be rejected.

Do they accept GPL?

10) Entries requiring human interaction to be built are not allowed.

Do you think MS understands a build from the command line using make?

11) Programs that require special privileges (setuid, setgid, super-user, special owner or group) are not allowed.

This rules out the kernel of any OS.

12) Legal abuse of the rules is somewhat encouraged. An entry that, in the opinion of the judges, violates the rules will be disqualified. Entries that attempt to abuse the rules must try to justify why their rule abuse is legal in the ---remark--- section.

"Did not!" is not a very convincing argument.

I charge someone, anyone, who can do it to submit to the next obfuscated c code contest (www.ioccc.org) a rewrite of the software in the shape of a nice pretty picture. Then it could be protected under our stupid copyright laws. Course, that would be a supreme bitch to maintain!!

Apart from some programs requiring white space in order to work (especially in printed strings), Sometimes it makes it prettier (This or This, you might need to view the source, as some browsers may reformat this on their rendered views).

Apart from some programs requiring white space in order to work (especially in printed strings), Sometimes it makes it prettier (This or This, you might need to view the source, as some browsers may reformat this on their rendered views).

The code in question (I assume) is this lovely slashdotted ditty over here in case anyone wants a look-see.

My favorite still has to be this one which translates the imput into pig latin while being itself an ascii pig comprised of pig-latin'ed code. I'd inline it, but slashdot munges the extra spacing.

I'm surprised I didn't see it in the previous comments (or perhaps I just missed it), but most of the obfuscation techinques mentioned above have been used in the IOCCC and commented in Don Libes' Obfuscated C and Other Mysteries (the book is currently out of print). I highly recommend it! :)

Pig Latin Code in the shape of a pig

Mark