The International Obfuscated C Code Contest

http://www0.us.ioccc.org/years.html

This is a pretty entertaining page... The title says it all. It's an annual contest where people send in the most confusing code they can make. And believe me, there are some really whacky ones.

Here's one I liked. It's the generic "hello world" program.

Code:

---

#include "stdio.h"
#define        e 3
#define        g (e/e)
#define        h ((g+e)/2)
#define        f (e-g-h)
#define        j (e*e-g)
#define k (j-h)
#define        l(x) tab2[x]/h
#define        m(n,a) ((n&(a))==(a))

long tab1[]={ 989L,5L,26L,0L,88319L,123L,0L,9367L };
int tab2[]={ 4,6,10,14,22,26,34,38,46,58,62,74,82,86 };

main(m1,s) char *s; {
    int a,b,c,d,o[k],n=(int)s;
    if(m1==1){ char b[2*j+f-g]; main(l(h+e)+h+e,b); printf(b); }
    else switch(m1-=h){
        case f:
            a=(b=(c=(d=g)<<g)<<g)<<g;
            return(m(n,a|c)|m(n,b)|m(n,a|d)|m(n,c|d));
        case h:
            for(a=f;a<j;++a)if(tab1[a]&&!(tab1[a]%((long)l(n))))return(a);
        case g:
            if(n<h)return(g);
            if(n<j){n-=g;c='D';o[f]=h;o[g]=f;}
            else{c='\r'-'\b';n-=j-g;o[f]=o[g]=g;}
            if((b=n)>=e)for(b=g<<g;b<n;++b)o[b]=o[b-h]+o[b-g]+c;
            return(o[b-g]%n+k-h);
        default:
            if(m1-=e) main(m1-g+e+h,s+g); else *(s+g)=f;
            for(*s=a=f;a<e;) *s=(*s<<e)|main(h+a++,(char *)m1);
        }
}

---

I'm still trying to figure it out...

Some of the codes on the site even look like ASCII art. Nice.

mjk

I've always wanted a tutorial on how the contest entries manage to look so impossible. It just seems like completely bogus code half the time. :P

ac

Well after you've seen the Perl camel [there's a tee shirt on ThinkGeek.com] that is both ASCII art and real working code [if I remember corectly it actually prints out two camels or something] little can surprise you :)

My brother has the PERL camel T-shirt, and if you enter the code as normal.........nothing.
you have to enter the code in the same pattern as the camel.....well impressed with that.