1.1 KiB
1.1 KiB
International Obfuscated C Code Contest
The International Obfuscated C Code Contest (IOCCC for short) is an annual online contest in making the most creatively obfuscated programs in C. It's kind of a "just for fun" thing but similarly to esoteric languages there's an element of art and clever hacking that carries a great value. While the productivity freaks will argue this is just a waste of time, the true programmer appreciates the depth of knowledge and creative thinking needed to develop a beautifully obfuscated programs.
The contest runs since 1984 and was started by Landon Curt Noll and Larry Bassel.
Hacking the rules of the contest is also encouraged and there is an extra award for "worst abuse of the rules".
Some common ideas employed in the programs include:
- formatting source code as ASCII art
- misleading identifiers and comments
- extreme macro and preprocessor abuse
- abuse of compiler flags
- weird things like the main function recursion