(cache) The International Obfuscated C Code Contest

The 19^th IOCCC Competition

Sorry, right now you cannot enter the contest. The 19^th International Obfuscated C Code Contest is now closed.

Even though you missed this year's contest, please consider entering the next contest! Whilst you wait for new rules, which you should check before sending in an entry, you can get an idea of what to expect by reading the old rules and the old guidelines.

Goals of the Contest
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

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. :-)

What's New?

25 February 2009: Slashdot "Whither the 19th IOCCC?". If you wish to contact the judges or contribute time to the IOCCC please send us email.
4 April 2008: Added a two IOCCC web site mirrors: www.no.ioccc.org (Halden, Norway 59° 7' N ° 28' E), and www2.us.ioccc.org (Wall Drug, South Dakota US 43° 59' N 102° 14' W) to support the upcomming source code release of winning entries for 2006.
2 November 2007: The winners of the 19th International Obfuscated C Code Contest are listed here. The Vintage Computer Festival 10.0 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California is at 11:30 am on Sunday, November 4, 2007.
15 September 2007: We have selected 14 winning entries. We will be contacting the winners shortly and will update this page with more information afterwards.

The first public display of the IOCCC winners will be given at the Vintage Computer Festival 10.0 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. Watch this space for further details.
04 August 2007: We have entered into the final (and most challenging) round of juding.
01 March 2007: The 19^th International Obfuscated C Code Contest is closed to new entries.
15 February 2007: We have been monitoring a pretty steady attempt to get submission codes sent to invalid email addresses. Some additional defences have been added. If you are trying to submit an entry and cannot get a submission code please contact us.
28 January 2007: The judges have decided to withdraw the following text from the guidelines:
If you use C preprocessor directives (#define, #if, #ifdef, ...),
the leading '#' must be the first non-whitespace character on a line.
While some broken C preprocessors do not allow whitespace before a
'#', most do.
31 December 2006: The 19^th International Obfuscated C Code Contest is open from
31-Dec-2006 23:59 UTC to 28-Feb-2007 23:59 UTC.
1 April 2006: Óscar Toledo, the author of the winning chess-playing program, has corrected a bug. The updated version has been included in the TAR file.
20 February 2006: The winning entries of the 18th International Obfuscated C Code Contest are here. Some judges' comments are missing, though.
29 December 2005: The winners of the 18th International Obfuscated C Code Contest are testing and reviewing the winning entries.
6 November 2005: The winners of the 18th International Obfuscated C Code Contest are listed here.
29 October 2005: The winners of the 18th International Obfuscated C Code Contest will be announced Saturday, November 5 at the Vintage Computer Festival in Mountain View, California. The presentation is scheduled to start at 11 AM.
23 May 2005: The judges are now working on judging the 18th International Obfuscated C Code Contest.
23 May 2005: The 18th International Obfuscated C Code Contest is now closed.
21 March 2005: The 18^th International Obfuscated C Code Contest is open from
21-Mar-2005 00:00 UTC to 22-May-2005 23:59:59 UTC.
26 February 2005: David Edney was the first person to point out that he has a tattoo of the 1994/smr.c winner on his forehead.
18 January 2005: Thomas Scovell becomes the first person get a tattoo of a non-empty IOCCC winner (1984/anonymous.c).
8 November 2004: The source code of the winners of the 17th International Obfuscated C Code Contest is here.
30 August 2004: The 17th IOCCC Winners have been announced. Please visit the winners page.
29 July 2004: The judges are in the final phases of judging the 17th International Obfuscated C Code Contest. Prepare to be amazed by this years winners!
29 June 2004: The judges are now working on judging the 17th International Obfuscated C Code Contest.
29 Feb 2004: The 17th International Obfuscated C Code Contest is now closed.
23 Feb 2004: The 2004 IOCCC online submission tool is now available!
26 Jan 2004: Corrected the mkentry.c program to use the correct rule year (2004), the correct start date (07Jan2004 00:00 UTC), and the correct EMail address (e dot 2004 at ioccc dot org).
25 Jan 2004: The quality/stability of the online submission tool is not what it should be. Please check again on 1 Feb 2004.
06 Jan 2004: The 17th International Obfuscated C Code Contest is open from
07-Jan-2004 00:00 UTC to 29-Feb-2004 23:59:59 UTC.
20 Nov 2003: Sorry, but time issues have prevented the 2003 competition from starting! Look for the competition early in 2004!
06 Sep 2003: The 2003 contest will open very soon.
04 Feb 2003: Add the answer to the question ''How did the IOCCC get started?'' to the bottom of the FAQ.
31 Jan 2003: The source code of the winners of the 16th International Obfuscated C Code Contest is here.
24 Jan 2003: We're about to send out the final results, once our mirrors are updated.
16 Mar 2002: The IOCCC web site is being mirrored in 3 places. See the mirror request page if you are interested in mirroring the IOCCC (especially from an area that we do not have already covered).
8 Mar 2002: The winners of the 16th International Obfuscated C Code Contest have been selected. We are in the process of notifying the winners by EMail. The list of who won the 16th IOCCC is available.

The source code for the winning entries is not yet available. We will be giving the 16th IOCCC winners a chance to review our writeup of their entries. We hope to release the winning source by mid April 2002.
4 Mar 2002: We are literally several days away from posting the list of the winning entries. One of the judges had connectivity problems last week - sorry for the delay.
27 Feb 2002: We have now reached the final judging rounds. Here is a brief (incomplete) list of reasons for disqualification this year:
- usage of a non-POSIX include file, e.g. conio.h
- unannounced dependence on endianness
- unannounced dependence on unaligned word access
- entry is not obfuscated after preprocessing
- entry is not original, we've seen the code elsewhere
- entry fails to perform
- an ANSI C compiler legitimately errors out
5 Jan 2002: Finally, there is a version of 1988/isaak that compiles and works in modern C environments.
25 Dec 2001: The location of the original source for Nathan Sidwell's 1992 winner has been updated.
02 Dec 2001: The 16th International Obfuscated C Code Contest closed on 01 Dec 2001 23:59:59 UTC. Right now the judges are working judging the many entries that were received. The best guess on when the winners will be announced is Jan or Feb 2002.
27 Nov 2001: The hint file for Brian Westley's 1988 winner now includes a suggestion for compiling with strictly conforming ANSI C Preprocessors.
31 Oct 2001: Added an official IOCCC FAQ.
12 Oct 2001: Fixed a typo in the guidelines relating to use of OpenMotif and removed the previous sentence that seemed to contradict the newly permitted use of OpenMotif. Sorry²!
02 Oct 2001: A guidelines change mark relating to the permitted use of OpenMotif was missing from the 01 Oct 2001 posting, sorry. This oversight has been corrected.
01 Oct 2001: The 16th International Obfuscated C Code Contest is open from:
01 Oct 2001 00:00 UTC to 01 Dec 2001 23:59:59 UTC.
See How to enter for details.
26 Jan 2001: The old 15th IOCCC ``What's New? has been archived.
30 Jun 99: The old 14th IOCCC ``What's New? has been archived.
19 Mar 98: The old 13th IOCCC ``What's New? has been archived.
03 Oct 96: The old 12th IOCCC ``What's New? has been archived.

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Authored by:

chongo <was here> /\oo/\

Copyright © 2005, Landon Curt Noll, Simon Cooper, Peter Seebach and Leonid A. Broukhis. All Rights Reserved.
Permission for personal, education or non-profit use is granted provided 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.