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|years_active = 1984–1996, 1998, 2000, 2001, 2004–2006, 2011–2015,
|first = {{start date|1984}}
|founders = [[Landon Curt Noll]], Larry Bassel
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The '''International Obfuscated C Code Contest''' (abbreviated '''IOCCC''') is a [[computer programming]] contest for [[Source code|code]] written in [[C (programming language)|C]] that is the most creatively [[obfuscated code|obfuscated]]
Entries are evaluated anonymously by
==History==
The IOCCC was started by [[Landon Curt Noll]] and Larry Bassel in 1984 while employed at National Semiconductor's Genix porting group. The idea for the contest came after they compared notes with each other about some poorly written code that they had to fix, notably the [[Bourne shell]], which used macros to emulate [[ALGOL 68]] syntax, and a buggy version of [[finger (Unix)|finger]] for BSD.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.ioccc.org/faq.html#ioccc_start |title=
Compared with other programming contests, the IOCCC is described as "not all that serious" by [[Michael Swaine (technical author)|Michael Swaine]], editor of ''[[Dr. Dobb's Journal]]''.<ref>{{cite journal |url=https://
==Rules==
The Rules<ref name=rules>{{cite web|url=https://www.ioccc.org/next/rules.html|title=Rules|publisher= International Obfuscated C Code Contest | website= IOCCC.org }}</ref> vary from year to year and are posted with a set of Guidelines<ref name=guidelines>{{cite web|url=https://www.ioccc.org/next/guidelines.html|title=Guidelines|publisher= International Obfuscated C Code Contest | website= IOCCC.org }}</ref> that attempt to convey additional enlightenment about the Rules. They are published on the IOCCC website. In addition all material including winning entries are published under [[Creative Commons license]] [[Share-alike|BY-SA]] 4.0 International.<ref>{{cite web| url= https://www.ioccc.org/license.html|title=IOCCC License Employed|publisher= International Obfuscated C Code Contest | website= IOCCC.org| date= | access-date= }}</ref>.
{{
The
The most significant of the Rules is Rule 2a & 2b (originally Rule 1), gross & net source size limits. During the life time of the contest, Rule 2 has evolved<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.ioccc.org/faq.html#size_rule_history|title=Rule 2 Eras|publisher=International Obfuscated C Code Contest|website=IOCCC.org}}</ref> to accommodate subtle increases in source size limits. The 1984 contest started with a maximum source size of 512 bytes, which increased a few more times to 1536 bytes in 1991. In 1992, Rule 2 was split to distinguish between maximum overall size and maximum size ignoring white space and semicolons given certain conditions. In the early days, in order to make best use of space allowed, white space was stripped, often resulting in a compact blob of text, making it hard to read by humans, but served little purpose once passed through a C "pretty print" utility, which the judges did as part of their process. In 1992 the judges believed that form of obfuscation had played out and they wanted to encourage people to explore other ways of formatting the code, such as an ASCII image themed after the entry, or simply more traditionally indented C source. Around 2012/2013 the iocccsize(1)<ref>{{cite web|url=https://github.com/SirWumpus/iocccsize#history|title=iocccsize|publisher=Anthony C Howe|website=GitHub.com}}</ref> tool was adopted by the contest and tweaked to aid both contestants and judges apply the Rule 2b counting algorithm.
==Obfuscations employed==
Entries often employ strange or unusual tricks, such as using the [[C preprocessor]] to do things it was not designed to do
Contributions have included source code formatted to resemble images, text, etc., after the manner of [[ASCII art]], preprocessor redefinitions to make code harder to read, and [[self-modifying code]]. In several years an entry was submitted that required a new definition of some of the rules for the next year, regarded as a high honor. An example is the world's shortest [[Quine (computing)|self-reproducing program]]. The entry was a program designed to output its own source code, and which had zero bytes of source code. When the program ran, it printed out zero bytes, equivalent to its source code.<ref>{{cite web|year=1994|title=iocc smr| url= https://www.ioccc.org/1994/smr/index.html |
In the effort to take obfuscation to its extremes, contestants have produced programs which skirt around the edges of C standards, or result in constructs which trigger rarely used code path combinations in compilers. As a result, several of the past entries may not compile directly in a modern compiler, and some may cause crashes.
==Examples==
Within the code size limit of only a few kilobytes, contestants have managed to do complicated things – a 2004 winner turned out an operating system.<ref>{{cite web| url=https://www.ioccc.org/2004/gavin.hint |title=gavin.hint3 |year=2004 |format=plain text |publisher= International Obfuscated C Code Contest | website= IOCCC.org |access-date=2023-05-01}}</ref>
===Toledo Nanochess===
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===Pi===
Below is a 1988 entry which calculates [[pi]] by looking at its own [[area]]:<ref>{{cite web| url= https://www.ioccc.org/1988/westley.c |title= westley.c|
<syntaxhighlight lang="c">
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*[[Esoteric programming language]]
==Notes
{{notelist}}
==References==
{{reflist}}
==External links==
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