donn@utah-cs.UUCP (Donn Seeley) (09/02/84)
Let's make this a contest. There are several categories (e.g. 4.2 BSD VAX, S5 VAX, 4.2 BSD Sun, etc.). The winner in each category gets a hex core dump listing... The competitions are to find the shortest core dumper and shortest looper ('expression causes compiler loop'). Chris Torek and I have already come up with some tough programs to beat (7-byte core dumper and 5-byte looper in the 4.2 BSD VAX category). Mail entries to me and I'll summarize when the dust clears. More ideas for good competitions are welcome. Some competitions are trivial, so be careful what you suggest. For example there is a 1-byte program which is an unrecoverable error ('goodbye!') on a VAX with 4.2 BSD. One fun competition might be to find the shortest program with too many errors ('compiler error: too many errors')... Any other good ones? When the competition is over I'll solicit bug fixes for the problems, then we can begin again with fixed compilers... Donn Seeley University of Utah CS Dept donn@utah-cs.arpa 40 46' 6"N 111 50' 34"W (801) 581-5668 decvax!utah-cs!donn