The results of the 20th international competition of incomprehensible C code

The organizers of IOCCC (International Competition for the Most Unclear Code C) pressed the “turbo” button. If the results of the last contest were published four years after, then now only two months have passed - and here they are .

Ready-made programs of less than 4,096 bytes in size can participate in the competition, with the number of significant characters, without taking into account spaces, tabs and signs; () should not exceed 2048. The task of the competition is to “check compilers for stress, demonstrate the subtleties of the C programming language and the importance of adhering to the programming style (doing the opposite)”.

The title of winner (Best of Show) and the title of “most reduced” (most shrinkable) won the four-level downsampler akari ( Makefile , akari.c ). The program is able to reduce different graphics, including ASCII graphics. Since its source code is also formatted as ASCII graphics, it can also reduce its source code. The result is another valid C program that can process text. And this is also not the end. After processing the code a second time with the help of a new program, a third functional program is obtained (here the gcc compiler is already starting to issue some warnings, but it will still make the executable file).

Other winners:

• blakely ( Makefile , blakely.c ): the program plays Conway’s Life, calculates the Pi number up to 16 decimal places, receiving its source code at the input, and also checks the primacy of the cellular automaton
• borsanyi ( Makefile , borsanyi.c ): fast histogram generator in an unusual way
• dlowe ( Makefile , dlowe.c ): self-learning neural network
• eastman ( Makefile , eastman.c ): an attempt to repeat the classic Amiga Boing Ball using ASCII graphics
• fredriksson ( Makefile , fredriksson.c ): using the Burrows-Wheeler decompressor, creates the source code for the agrep program and launches it (award for the “most useful” program at IOCCC)
• goren ( Makefile , goren.c ): rebus program in memory of Rene Magritte
• hamaji ( Makefile , hamaji.c ): a program for solving Japanese crosswords
• hou ( Makefile , hou.c ): a self-documenting scientific calculator
• konno ( Makefile , konno.c ): recognizes keystrokes on a QWERTY keyboard
• richards ( Makefile , richards.c ): JIT compiler and dc calculator
• toledo ( Makefile , toledo.c ): two-man tank game (requires X11)
• vik ( Makefile , vik.c ): .MOD audio file converter to 44.1 kHz stereo and player
• zucker ( Makefile , zucker.c ): a symbol image generator