1996 marked the "The Thirteenth International Obfuscated C Code Contest"

Copyright (c) 1997, Landon Curt Noll & Sriram Srinivasan.
All Rights Reserved.  Permission for personal, educational or non-profit use is
granted provided this this copyright and notice are included in its entirety
and remains unaltered.  All other uses must receive prior permission in writing
from Landon Curt Noll and Sriram Srinivasan.


Standard IOCCC stuff
--------------------

The IOCCC has an official home page:

	http://www.ioccc.org

containing previous winning entries, information about the judges,
announcements and much more.

Use make to compile entries.  It is possible that on BSD or non-unix
systems the makefile needs to be changed.  See the Makefile for details.

Look at the source and try to figure out what the programs do, and run
them with various inputs.  If you want to, look at the hints files for
spoilers - this year we included most of the information included
by the submitters.

Read over the makefile for compile/build issues.  Your system may
require certain changes (add or remove a library, add or remove a
#define).


Where are Larry Bassel and Barbara Frezza?
------------------------------------------

It is not true that Larry Bassel avoided the 13th IOCCC on grounds of
superstition!  Larry (as well as Landon) is fond of prime numbers.
Larry is so fond of prime numbers that he decided to become a graduate
student in number theory at UC San Diego.  For this reason Larry
decided to sit out this year and plans to be back next year.

Barbara Frezza also went to San Diego to enter into law school
at the same time.  Her cooking in the role of official chef was
sorely missed.  We look forward to her return to the contest
next year as well.

Both Larry and Barbara have taken important new steps in their
lives as we wish them the best.  When it is all over, Larry will
be able to produce obfuscated mathematical proofs, and Barbara
will be able de-obfuscate the many legal obfuscations.  :-)


Remarks on some of the entries
------------------------------

This year, Jens Schweikhardt won 3 times ... a new IOCCC record.
Meanwhile, Brian Westley came up with his 8th winning entry, twice the
number of the next highest count.  But with people like Schweikhardt
around, this lead could fall fast.  

As we state in the guidelines, the names of the winners are as much
news to us as they are to you because we keep authorship separate from
rest of the entry.  Some people have it, we guess!

There were a few very good entries that might have won if it were not
for the fact that they didn't work.  If you didn't win, but think you
had a chance: test your program, fix it and submit it next year!


A few notes regarding future contests
-------------------------------------

There is no 1997 contest.

The next contest will not open until sometime in March 1998, and will
close sometime around the end of May 1998.  The rules for the 1998
contest have not been formed at this time and are not expected to be
ready for distribution until late February 1998.  

So what happened to 1997?  Well the next USENIX Technical Conference 
will be held Jun 15-19, 1998 (in New Orleans, USA).  The 18 month
span between conferences will cause the IOCCC to skip over 1997.

Be sure to wait until the 1998 rules are posted before submitting entries.  
Rules differ from year to year, sometimes in significant ways.

Please send us comments and suggestions what we have expressed above.
Also include anything else that you would like to see in future contests.
Send such email to:

	judges@toad.com

If you use, distribute or publish these entries in some way, please drop
us a line.  We enjoy seeing who, where and how the contest is used.

If you have problems with any of the entries, AND YOU HAVE A FIX, please
EMail the fix (patch file or the entire changed file) to the above address.