1996 Programming Contest Rules and Information
- 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.
- Teams will not have their own printer. The network printer is
accessible through .
- 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.
- No food or drink in the labs. There will be lunch before
the contest, and refreshments supplied afterwords.
- 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
refuse to answer any question. The question and its answer may be
provided to all contestants if it seems relevent.
- The only discussion permitted is within a team and with the
contest staff.
- 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.
- You may work on the problems in any order, and submit them in
any order.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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)
- 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.
- The judges' decision is FINAL.
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.
- 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: ``try 1 file.pas'' will compile the contents of
file.pas and test it with sample data for problem 1.
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:
``submit 3 file.pas'' will
send the contents of file.pas
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.