2001 marked the "The Sixteenth International Obfuscated C Code Contest"

Copyright (C) Landon Curt Noll, Simon Cooper, Peter Seebach
and Leonid A. Broukhis, 2001-2002.
All Rights Reserved.  Permission for personal, educational 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
from the contest judges.


Standard IOCCC stuff
--------------------

The IOCCC has a web site and now has a number of international mirrors.  The
primary site can be found at,

     http://www.ioccc.org

Use make to compile entries.  It is possible that on non-Un*x / non-Linux
systems the makefile needs to be changed.  See the Makefile for details.

Look at the source and try to figure out what the programs do, and run
them with various inputs.  If you want to, look at the hints files for
spoilers - this year we included most of the information included
by the submitters.

Read over the makefile for compile/build issues.  Your system may
require certain changes (add or remove a library, add or remove a
#define).

Some ANSI C compilers are not quite as good as they should be.  If
yours is lacking, you may need to compile using gcc instead of your
local compiler.


Remarks on some of the entries
------------------------------

There were some outstanding entries that did not win.  Unfortunately
some very good entries lost because they:

    + depended too much on non-portable side effects in expressions;
    + depended too much on a particular byte order;
    + required the use of a special script, data file or pseudo-machine
      language that was not supplied with the entry.

We hope the authors of some of those entries will fix and re-submit
them for the next IOCCC.

We believe you will be impressed with this year's winners.  The Best of Show
is a fine example of obfuscation.  But don't ignore the other winners!
There are games, programs that speak, ones that compile code and one that
might run binaries you already have!

The Worst Abuse of the Rules is technically allowed by the rules.  This year
we awarded it again, but don't assume you can get away with using the same
technique next time ... :-)

This year there were several repeat winners.  This is understating the
achievement a little - one person has won 8 times before!  (Please note that
judging is done completely anonymously).


Why has it taken so long to post the winning source?
----------------------------------------------------

This is somewhat my (Simon Cooper) fault.  I do apologize to the IOCCC
community for this!  Judging does take quite a lot of time, and I
over-committed myself several times this year.  Without divulging too much,
we do look at and work out what every entry does.


Final Comments
--------------

Please send us comments and suggestions what we have expressed above.
Also include anything else that you would like to see in future contests.
Send such email to:

	questions@ioccc.org

If you use, distribute or publish these entries in some way, please drop
us a line.  We enjoy seeing who, where and how the contest is used.

You must include the words ``ioccc question'' in the subject of your EMail
message when sending EMail to the judges.

If you have problems with any of the entries, AND YOU HAVE A FIX, please
EMail the fix (patch file or the entire changed file) to the above address.

Watch:

	http://www.ioccc.org/

for news of the next contest.

=-=
