18th International Obfuscated C Code Contest Opens

chongo writes "The 18th International Obfuscated C Code Contest, the Internet's longest running contest, is now open. The goals, rules, and guidelines are available. Use the online submission tool to submit your obfuscated C code by 22-May-2005 23:59:59 UTC."

Comments

Past Winners with Spoilers

[Entropy248]

Here are some past winners with "Spoilers" for what they do. It's already pretty slow though and I'm first post.

Mirrors

[ugo]

www.tw.ioccc.org - Hsin-Chu, Taiwan
www.au.ioccc.org - Sydney, Australia
www.de.ioccc.org - Frankfurt/Main, Germany
www.es.ioccc.org - Madrid, Spain
www.gr.ioccc.org - Athens, Greece
www0.us.ioccc.org - Sunnyvale California, US
www1.us.ioccc.org - Saint Paul, Minnesota US

Speaking of obfuscated code...

[PornMaster]

If you haven't been there yet, you should check out TheDailyWTF... it's not obfuscated code, but rather unmaintainable code people submit to show what they've been left to deal with at work. Quite interesting, and sometimes as difficult to understand as intentionally obfuscated code.

Imawhore

[Kethinov]

Google cache of the main page: http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:QecdG73oJ2cJ: www.ioccc.org/main.html+The+International+Obfuscat ed+C+Code+Contest&hl=en&client=firefox-a

Full text of rules.txt

18th International Obfuscated C Code Contest Rules

Copyright (C) 2005 Leonid A. Broukhis, Simon Cooper, Landon Curt Noll and
Peter Seebach.

All Rights Reserved. Permission for personal, education or non-profit use is
granted provided this this copyright and notice are included in its entirety
and remains unaltered. All other uses must receive prior permission in
writing from the contest judges.

Obfuscate: tr.v. -cated, -cating, -cates. 1. a. To render obscure.
b. To darken. 2. To confuse: his emotions obfuscated his
judgment. [LLat. obfuscare, to darken : ob(intensive) +
Lat. fuscare, to darken < fuscus, dark.] -obfuscation n.
obfuscatory adj.

GOALS OF THE CONTEST:

* To write the most Obscure/Obfuscated C program under the rules below.
* To show the importance of programming style, in an ironic way.
* To stress C compilers with unusual code.
* To illustrate some of the subtleties of the C language.
* To provide a safe forum for poor C code. :-)

The 18th IOCCC contest window is:

| 21-Mar-2005 00:00 UTC to 22-May-2005 23:59:59 UTC

RULES:

To help us with the volume of entries, we ask that you follow these rules:

1) Your entry must be a complete program.

2) The size of your program source must be <= 4096 bytes in length.
The number of characters excluding whitespace (tab, space,
newline, formfeed, return), and excluding any ; { or } immediately
followed by whitespace or end of file, must be <= 2048.

3) Submissions should be performed using the instructions outlined at,

| http://www.ioccc.org/2005/submit

4) If your entry is selected as a winner, it will be modified as follows:

Your 'build' instructions will be incorporated into a
makefile. If your build instructions *is* a makefile then
it should be portable and usable from within a master
makefile.

Your program source will be renamed using an identifier of
our choice (usually your family name or anonymous) followed
by an optional digit, followed by '.c'

Your entry will be compiled into a file with the above name
minus the '.c'.

If your entry requires that a build file exist, state so in
your entry's remark section. The makefile will be arranged to
execute a build shell script containing the 'build'
information. The name of this build shell script will be your
entry's title, possibly followed by a digit, followed by '.sh'.

If needed, your entry's remarks should indicate how your entry
must be changed in order to deal with the new filenames.

5) The build file, the source and the resulting executable should be
treated as read-only files. If your entry needs to modify these files,
it should make and modify a copy of the appropriate file. If this
occurs, state so in your entry's remarks.

6) Your program source 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 "remarks" section of your submission.

7) The program must be of original work. All submitted programs are
are thereby put in the public domain. All explic

Re:Reminds me of a joke...

[Anonymous Coward]

This and so much more.

Re:I wonder...

[downbad]

They could run it through Perl and look at the optimized syntax tree it generates, but I suspect that's outside most hackers' repertoires.

Re:Reminds me of a joke...

[Gis_Sat_Hack]

that would be
http://www.archive.org/details-db.php?mediatype=mo vies&identifier=episode_1051
or
http://www.archive.org/details-db.php?mediatype=mo vies&identifier=episode_1052

You want obfuscated?

[prakslash]

Try this:

Whitespace

It is so obfuscated, you cannot even see it!

Re:Maze of Code

[Speare]

This was one of my favorite ObC programs from the distant past. Did you notice that the first variables spell MAZE? Did you notice the code is a maze? Did you notice the passages of the maze spell MAZE? A proper ObC entry is not just obfuscated, but is an onion of beautifully expressed multiple messages.

There's another one in which the program is shaped like a sailor's semaphore, and produces stick-figure cartoons of a sailor waving semaphores to spell out a user-supplied message.