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Programmers love tricks. In this chapter, we take a look at some working programs that use extremely clever tricks to get the job done.
One interesting thing about these algorithms is that in the wild, they all existed totally without comments, thus giving all the programmers that followed a chance to puzzle them out for themselves. Now it's your turn.
What's the quickest way to do the following:
The variable i has the value 2 or 1. If i is 2 change it to 1. If i is 1 change
it to 2.
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There is a contest held every year called the Obfuscated C Contest. The contestants try to figure out how to write the most difficult and hard-to-read program possible. After all, they're programmers, and they know programs hard to understand under the best of circumstances. This contest gives them a chance to understand a program under the worst of circumstances.
Some of the awards have interesting titles:
BEST SIMPLE TASK PERFORMED IN A COMPLEX WAY.
BEST NONSIMPLE TASK PERFORMED IN A COMPLEX WAY.
MOST ILLEGIBLE CODE.
MOST WELL ROUNDED IN CONFUSION.
BEST RESEMBLANCE TO RANDOM TYPING ON THE KEYBOARD.
WORST ABUSE OF THE RULES.
STRANGEST SOURCE LAYOUT.
BEST ABUSE OF ANSI C.
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