Rules
Each year, the rules of the contest are published on the IOCCC website. Rules vary from year to year and are posted with a set of guidelines that attempt to convey the spirit of the rules.
The rules are often deliberately written with subtle loopholes that contestants are somewhat encouraged to find and abuse. This is the result of the contest being a "parody of the software development process". Entries that take advantage of some loophole in the rules (whether or not they pass a final round of judging) can cause the rules for the following year's contest to be adjusted accordingly (although often other subtle loopholes are deliberately introduced in the process).
Read more about this topic: International Obfuscated C Code Contest
Famous quotes containing the word rules:
“If you do not regard feminism with an uplifting sense of the gloriousness of woman’s industrial destiny, or in the way, in short, that it is prescribed, by the rules of the political publicist, that you should, that will be interpreted by your opponents as an attack on woman.”
—Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957)
“Today the tyrant rules not by club or fist, but, disguised as a market researcher, he shepherds his flocks in the ways of utility and comfort.”
—Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980)
“There are different rules for reading, for thinking, and for talking. Writing blends all three of them.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)