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ICFP 2001 Task

Posted by michael on from the friedl's-book-in-great-demand dept.

David Mentré writes: "The ICFP 2001 programming contest TASK is now available. The objective is to write an optimizer (aka compressor) for an HTML-like language. It must work for arbitrarily big inputs and in a limited wall-clock time. Can you guess what will be the winning language? ;)" We already announced the contest, but now that the task is available, it might be fun to look at. So what will the contestants come up with? Anyone think perl might be the language of choice? :)

8 of 110 comments (clear)

  1. How about.... by ChrisBennett · · Score: 4

    Java?
    Anyone? Ok, I'm actually serious, don't mod me up +1 Funny.

  2. And the winner is... by Pseudonym · · Score: 5

    I predict that the winner will probably be O'Caml, and for one reason only: it will beat the time limit. Moreover, this will have little to do with the speed of the O'Caml implementation.

    Your program has to complete within a given wall time (not CPU time). This is supplied as a command-line argument and environment variable. The winner will be the tool which can stop computing before the time is up and produce the output. The winning program will be one that iteratively improves the input string, but is monitored by another thread which stops the optimiser thread when the time is almost up, then grabs the best solution so far and performs the output.

    O'Caml just happens to have good built-in primitives to write this kind of "interrupt the thread when the time is up and let me know what you did" computation.

    --
    sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
  3. Re:Who will win? Look at past years: by selectspec · · Score: 4

    Thats because all of the good C engineers have jobs and are too busy to fsck around with stupid games like this. Caml programmers bored from a lack of any employment in the real world had no problem finding the time to dedicate to this problem.

    --

    Someone you trust is one of us.

  4. If you need me... by Nastard · · Score: 5

    If you need me, I'll be doing a preliminary victory dance over in the QBASIC camp...

  5. Re:no ++ by Sapien__ · · Score: 5
    Umm... from the website:

    This programming contest is being conducted by ICFP, which implies a context of functional programming. However, rather than debate the definition of a "functional programming language," we will allow submitted programs to be written in any language whatsoever, as long as it has an implementation for Pentium PCs running Linux. Mixing languages is entirely acceptable; perhaps you will write in Caml and Haskell, with a Tcl script to do the gluing.

    ie, it doesn't have to be a functional programming language.

  6. Who will win? Look at past years: by brlewis · · Score: 5
    2000
    1. PLClub submitted two separate entries using OCaml, either of which would have won the contest.
    2. Camls 'R Us took second place.
    3. Galois Connections took third with their Haskell entry.
    4. The Merry Mercurians took fourth with their Mercury entry.
    1999:
    1. Camls 'R Us mopped up the competition with their 3585-line OCaml entry
    2. The 1250-line Haskell Entry that took 2nd place was written in a mere 24 hours.
    1998:
    1. First prize was a Cilk entry. Winning the contest doesn't seem to have made the language take off in popularity.
    2. Second prize: an OCaml entry ``beat out 23 C and C++ entries, many of these being highly tuned programs produced by extremely competent programmers skilled in game-playing algorithms.''
  7. Re:this story is gay by Patrick+May · · Score: 5

    You mean this story is thin, neat, and dresses well?

  8. Python Team by crealf · · Score: 4
    A Python team is trying to solve the task:

    Everyone is welcome.