ioccc
award
The “C” Language is known for its susceptibility to
eccentric implementations. With too much creativity, code can be nearly
impossible to read or maintain. Several years ago, a few programmers
created the
International Obfuscated C
Code Contest to reward those who can abuse it capabilities with
flair. It is held over the Internet each year and it is to software
engineers as a bad Hemmingway Contest would be to novelists.
My professional career unfortunately peaked a decade ago when I entered
the 13th annual contest for the first time and won an award for the
“Best Obfuscated Character Set Utility.” It was presented
January 9, 1997 at the USENIX 1997 Annual Technical Conference.
The program takes regular text as input and converts it to Braille with
asterisks (*) as output. Additionally, when you give it Braille, it
converts it back to regular text. Oh yeah, one more thing, the program
also is written in Braille so when you feed the source code
into itself, it displays the instructions on what the program does.
Some guy from Sweden won the Best of Show. I think he was on steroids.
For those who wish to look at this horrid “C” code, here it
is:
#define x char
#define z else
#define w gets
#define r if
#define u int
#define s main
#define v putchar
#define y while
#define t " A?B?K?L?CIF?MSP?E?H?O?R?DJG?NTQ?????U?V?????X???????Z????W??Y??"
s ( ) { x* c , b[ 5 * 72 ]; u a, e , d [ 9
*9 *9 ] ; y (w ( b) ){ r ( 0 [ b] -7 *
5 ) { c = b ; y ( (* c - 6
* 7 )* * c )c = c+ 1 ; r (( -0 ) [ c ] && w ( b +
8 * 5* 3 ) && w (b +8 *5 * 6) )
{ a = 0; y ( a [ b ]
) { a [ d ] = ! ! ( a[ b] - 4 *8 ) ; a = a +
1; } y (a < 8 * 5 * 3 ) d [ ( a ++ )
] = 0 ; a = 0; y( b [
a + 8 *3 * 5 ] ) { d [ a ] = a [ d] + ! !( b[
a+ 40 * 3 ] -4 * 8) * 2 ; ++ a ; } a =
0 ; y ( a [ b + 6 * 40 ]
) {a [d ] += ! ! ( b[ a + 5 * 6 * 8 ] - 4 *
8 ) * 4; a = a + 1 ;} a= 0; y (a <3 *8
*5 ) { r ( a [ d ] ) { e
= 1 ; y ( e[ a + d] ){ * ( d+ a+ e ) = a[ d
+e - 1] +( d [ a + e ] << ( 3* e) ) ;e
= e + 1 ;} a = a +
e - 1 ; v( !! ( * ( d+
a) % ( 64 ) - 12 * 5
) + ( e
> 4 ) ?t [ e >2 ? 2 :a [ d ] ] :6 * 8 +( t [ d[
a ]/ 8 /8 ] -4 ) %( 10 ) ) ; r( ! (2 [a
+ d] + 3 [d + a ] ) ) v ( 4 * 8 )
; } a = a + 1 ; } v (5 * 2 ) ; } z {c =b ; e
= 0 ; y (* c ) { * c += - (* c > 8 * 12
) * 32 ; a = 8 * 8 ; r (* c
>= 48 &&* c<8 *8 -6) {*c =( * c + 1
) %( 5 * 2 ) + 65 ;y( --a >0 &&*
c- a[ t] ); d[ (e ++ )] =4 ;(
* ( d + (e ++) ))= 07 ;}z y(a -- >1
&&* c- t[a ]); d[ ( e = e + 1) -
1] =a %8 ;y (a /= 8) d[ (e ++
) ] = a% 8 ; ++ c ; * ( e ++ +d ) =0
;} -- e ;r ( e >0 ) {a = 1 ;
y ( a< 8 ) { c = b ;y
( c <e +b ) { v ( * ( c - b + d )& a? 6 *7
:8 * 4 ) ; c ++ ;} a= a + a ; v ( 2*
5) ; } v ( 5* 2 ) ; }} }} }