International Obfuscated C Code Contest | |
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Status | Active |
Genre | Coding contest |
Frequency | Semi-annually |
Years active | 1984–1996, 1998, 2000, 2001, 2004–2006, 2011–2015, 2018-2020 |
Inaugurated | 1984 |
Founders | Landon Curt Noll, Larry Bassel |
Most recent | 2020 |
Website | www.ioccc.org |
The International Obfuscated C Code Contest (abbreviated IOCCC) is a computer programming contest for the most creatively obfuscated C code. Held semi-annually, it is described as "celebrating [C's] syntactical opaqueness".[1] The winning code for the 27th contest, held in 2020, was released in July 2020.[2] Previous contests were held in the years 1984–1996, 1998, 2000, 2001, 2004–2006, 2011–2015 and 2018–2020.
Entries are evaluated anonymously by a panel of judges. The judging process is documented in the competition guidelines[3] and consists of elimination rounds. By tradition, no information is given about the total number of entries for each competition. Winning entries are awarded with a category, such as "Worst Abuse of the C preprocessor" or "Most Erratic Behavior", and then announced on the official IOCCC website. The contest states that being announced on the IOCCC website is the reward for winning.