International Obfuscated Python Code Competition: Submissions Open | Hacker News Reader

International Obfuscated Python Code Competition: Submissions Open

pyobfusc.com

47 pointsjuliusgeo20 comments

Directly inspired by the classic C coding competition, the IOCCC, the IOPCC is now accepting submissions. This is my first time running a competition, so there will likely be some issues in this first year. Tentative plan for submissions end-date is outlined on https://pyobfusc.com/#submit.

I love this idea! Thank you for organizing it. I plan to make a submission.

I had a question, in the IOCCC you create a program to solve a certain task. Is that the case here? Or is it any Python program?

Thanks! I'm very excited to see it. You can submit any Python program as long as it produces an output of some kind without human intervention. More details are here: https://pyobfusc.com/#rules

As far as I know, the requirement of the IOCCC has always just been to submit any obfuscated C program. A submitted program can do something interesting, or something ordinary in an interesting way, but there's no specific constraint on what it does.

You might be confusing the IOCCC with the Underhanded C Contest, in which the goal was to do some particular task, but also subvert it in a non-obvious way: http://www.underhanded-c.org/

You're right, that was my confusion. Thanks!

Brilliant, I'd love to participate. A few questions:

1. Are underhanded entries welcome, where the code looks straightforward but does something completely unexpected? For C it's a separate contest[1], but I find a big overlap in the spirit.

2. Are there any tricks that are considered poor taste, like unicode fuckery, light pranks (think "opening the CD tray", not "forkbomb"), or embedding code in other languages?

3. Max length limits? And do I get bonus points for extra short entries?

4. Is optional human input ok, like a game that by default plays itself?

5. Not really a question, but the website is very broken on wide screens[2].

[1]: http://www.underhanded-c.org/

[2]: https://i.imgur.com/bTvKC9y.png

Thank you for the feedback!

1. Yes! Underhanded entries are welcome. The obfuscation doesn't only apply to the code, but also the purpose of that code.

2. No tricks are in poor taste! The only limit is that we asked for submissions that don't re-use the common types listed by the IOCCC: https://www.ioccc.org/faq.html

3. No max length limits, and yes if you are able to create a very short program that will help. If you submit a longer program it would help the judges to provide a de-obfuscated version as well.

4. Yes, as long as it doesn't require any human intervention to produce output. There can be an alternate mode that allows human intervention, but the main goal is just to reduce confusion from potentially incorrect inputs.

5. Good point, will fix.

Also, one question I forgot to ask about the widescreen support. What browser are you using?

Happens on both Firefox and Chrome on Windows, at 125% scale. After the left and right body margins grow beyond 300px each, the header starts moving into the main text.

Weirdly enough, I can only replicate that behavior when I go to scale=80% and below, but it also varies based on the exact zoom. Perhaps if you zoom in one level below or above 125% it will resolve? I am admittedly not really good at CSS or HTML.

Sorry, I meant 125% screen scaling from the OS, not browser zoom. But I just tested and it also happens with no scaling. As I resize the window the header links slowly move down, until they overlap the text.

    import sys
    def c(j,t):
     sys.stdout.write(j('.')('P'))
     return t
    (lambda z:lambda y:z(z(y(lambda p:lambda n:(lambda s:lambda z:z(lambda x:
    lambda y:y)(lambda d:p(s)(y(s))(d)))(lambda x:lambda a:lambda s:lambda p:
    p(a)(lambda y:s(n(x))(y))))(lambda c:lambda a:lambda s:z(lambda y:s(c)(y)
    ))))(y(lambda p:lambda b:lambda t:t(c(b,p)))))(lambda s:lambda p:p(lambda
    x:lambda y:x)(s))(lambda f:(lambda q:q(q))(lambda x:f(lambda y:x(x)(y))))

Guess the pattern of Ps in the output (probably need to redirect stderr to /dev/null)

Gpt4 thinks it’s a factorial. https://chat.openai.com/share/2b085148-2629-40e6-86b0-b22a2b...

Any tip for setting Python's recursion limit before running it?

See https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3323001/what-is-the-maxi...

_ = (lambda _, __, ___: (lambda _, __, ___, ____: {_[___](____)[_(__)](_(___, ____)) for ___ in _}[_](__, _(___, __))) ( (lambda _: _ % 2 and _ // 2 or _ * 5 + 1), (lambda _: _ << 1), 2, 1 ) )[(lambda _, __: _ << __), 5, 2]

Guess what that is doing

It seems to be broken at multiple levels. Maybe something something Collatz conjecture?

Yeah, I tried a few times to fix the syntax errors but couldn't. I love that method of obfuscation, though.

I hope this doesn't come out as whining, but could you add an RSS feed so we can keep track of every contest? The IOCCC wasn't held every year, and the feed was very helpful to keep tabs on it.

That is a good point. The plan right now is to re-use the mailing list to send out submission information for each contest, so subscribing to that mailing list should give you some of the functionality. I will have to investigate setting up a real RSS feed.

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