Are Mathematica's datasets valid?

Question

I, being an avid Mma user, sometimes use its many datasets (such as ElementData) for golfing purposes. However, these require the Wolfram Research servers to have the data. As I'm not directly connecting to the Internet, I am wondering if this would be considered a loophole.

Answer 1

I do consider them built-ins. Just because you sort of have to update your language (or language's standard library) before you can use them for the first time, doesn't mean you're fetching the result from the internet. Once Mathematica has downloaded the data from Wolfram Research, it's just part of the language and can be reused (even after restarting Mathematica or similar).

Whether built-ins are allowed or not depends on the particular challenge in question. Using built-ins is no longer an accepted standard loophole, so unless the challenge rules them out explicitly, any of the *Data functions should be fair game.

(Of course, it might be polite first to ask the OP if they intended to allow them if it's not mentioned either way in the spec.)