1996 Programming Contest Rules and Information

Contest Specifics

  1. Each team will use ONE computer --- other computers in the labs must stay powered down. No computer equipment may be brought into the contest area.

  2. Teams will not have their own printer. The network printer is accessible through .

  3. The UMUC lab computers boot into a specialized menu that will not be relevent to the contest. If you get into the menu system, select 'J' to get out, then enter to get back to the contest directory.

  4. No food or drink in the labs. There will be lunch before the contest, and refreshments supplied afterwords.

  5. Any questions to the judges should be submitted in writing using the clarification forms provided. Fill out the form and give it to a runner. Each question will be acknowledged, although the judges may refues to answer any question. The question and its answer may be provided to all contestants if it seems relevent.

  6. The only discussion permitted is within a team and with the contest staff.

  7. The pascal documentation is available on-line through the Turbo Pascal help system. There will also be a few copies of the Turbo Pascal manuals available for quick browsing --- ask a runner if you need to see the printed manual.

  8. You may work on the problems in any order, and submit them in any order.

  9. Your programs must not do any file input or output. All contest input will come from the file -- that is, the keyboard, and all output must go to the file -- that is, to the console.

  10. Your programs should not any special turbo pascal units, in particular or . These are not needed, and their use may result in your submission being judged incorrect.

  11. You need consider the efficiency of your algorithms to make sure it will take less than two minutes running time. For some of the problems there exist solutions that might work, but are so inefficient that they will not finish in the allowed time.

  12. To receive credit for a problem solution, you must turn it in for judging, using the command described below. The response will be one of the following:

    • Correct
    • Incorrect Output
    • Incorrect Output Format
    • Incomplete Output
    • Failed Test Case
    • Compiler Error
    • Run-time Error
    • Run Time Limit Exceeded (2 minutes on the judges machines -- this should not be an issue unless you've coded an inefficient solution)

  13. After submitting a judged run, you may resubmit the same problem before getting a reply from the judges, but this will invalidate the previous submission, which will then be counted as an incorrect submission.

  14. The judges' decision is FINAL.

Scoring

The team that has had the most problems judged correct at the end of the contest will be declared the winner. If more than one team has solved the same number of problems, the winner is the one with the fewest penalty points.

Penalty points are assessed for solved problems only. Each problem accumulates one penalty point for each minute from the beginning of the contest until the time of a correct submission. Twenty penalty points are assessed for each incorrect submission.

The contest director reserves the right to adjust penalty points to allow for unforseen circumstances.

Contest Commands

turbo
The Turbo Pascal programming environment. You should do all your editing and testing within this environment.

try
The contest test program. Try takes the problem number and the file name of your pascal source code as parameters. It then compiles your program and runs it on the test data that was given with the problem. This lets you try your program before submitting it for judging. . For example:

This command will compile the contents of your file `' and test it with sample data. Remember the test data we supplied is a subset of the actual test data we will use to judge the problem (i.e. just because a program passes try doesn't mean it will be judged correct when submitted).

submit
The contest submission program. Submit takes the problem number and the file name of your pascal source code as parameters. It then sends your file over the network to the judges. For example:

This command will send the contents of your file `' to the judges as a solution to problem 3.

status
Get status of your submissions. This program will show the status of all problems you've submitted to the judges. But please be patient!

scores
Shows the current scores of all the teams. The ScoreBoard will be updated every few minutes. The scores command will be disabled during the last 45 minutes of the contest.