Questions tagged [rules]

Indicates you are proposing new rules or asking for clarification on other ones.

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16 votes
4 answers
493 views

Should answers have to handle invalid inputs?

I'm trying to get advice on how to make my challenges better. One rule that I feel like I'm always specifying is what to do when an invalid input is given. There's really two main paradigms to take ...
DJMcMayhem's user avatar
  • 59.1k
14 votes
3 answers
464 views

Should language-specific code golf challenges be explicitly disallowed?

In light of a recent code golf challenge in which the specification restricts participation to JavaScript, I think it's time we revisited making a hard rule about language-specific golfs. We may ...
Alex A.'s user avatar
  • 24.6k
15 votes
2 answers
3k views

Clarifying "serious contender" in the help center

The help center says: All solutions to challenges should: Correctly implement the required specification. Be a serious contender for the winning criteria in use. For example, an entry to ...
xnor's user avatar
  • 145k
3 votes
2 answers
789 views

PHP and "STDIN or an acceptable alternative"

I had a few discussions regarding to use or not to use STDIN in answer written in PHP. Reading from STDIN is very expensive in ...
insertusernamehere's user avatar
13 votes
2 answers
440 views

How to count programs in Folders?

Folders is an esoteric programming language without any files at all. Instead, the program is represented by the directory structure instead, so our normal rules for counting the file size of the ...
Martin Ender's user avatar
11 votes
1 answer
290 views

Are Mathematica's datasets valid?

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 ...
LegionMammal978's user avatar
7 votes
2 answers
309 views

Should a character encoding that can't actually be used by a compiler/interpreter be allowed?

Suppose you are answering a code-golf challenge in a language whose interpreter can only use UTF-8. Say you have a program that uses some code points in the range 128-255, but not higher. Would it ...
feersum's user avatar
  • 31.4k
15 votes
4 answers
711 views

Can I write a golfing library?

(This might be a duplicate of another question but all of its answers were vague nonanswers, and I can't find it again, so here goes...) I like python3 and I'm quite good at it; it's rather verbose ...
cat's user avatar
  • 5,859
22 votes
2 answers
2k views

What does "taking no input" mean for a program?

Fixed output challenges usually state that the program "must take no input". I usually interpret this as "The standard input is empty", but after thinking about this, there are actually several valid ...
Martin Ender's user avatar
10 votes
1 answer
168 views

Are Vim script solutions that does not print the output but starts a vim session with output legal?

I wrote this answer in this challenge using Vim script. I think I was really creative and got very proud of my solution. But I am not so sure if this is legal because this program does not print its ...
wefwefa3's user avatar
  • 186
9 votes
1 answer
167 views

Duplicates on other SE sites

After noticing that our site hasn't had a challenge on the Coin Problem, I recently posted one. However, it was pointed out that the challenge was posted on Stack Overflow back in the day when ...
Zgarb's user avatar
  • 42.6k
16 votes
2 answers
567 views

Are compiler-specific submissions allowed?

For example, in a c++ submission, this is valid if you use g++ #include <iostream> main() { std::cout << "Hello world!"; } but in any other ...
DJMcMayhem's user avatar
  • 59.1k
4 votes
1 answer
156 views

Why the mixed response?

I recently posted my first puzzle and was received with mixed responses. I know that the puzzle itself may look trivial, and in a way it is, but I think it's presented correctly, the objective is ...
Juan Cortés's user avatar
  • 1,516
4 votes
1 answer
276 views

Should point-free function expressions be allowed when a function is asked for?

Should an expression evaluating to a function count as a function for the purpose of providing a solution when a function is asked for? An earlier question on meta seems to indicate a consensus that ...
FireFly's user avatar
  • 7,278
3 votes
0 answers
99 views

voting popularity contest

I recently noticed that on many popularity contests the earlier answers get more upvotes than the ones that were submitted later. This effect is - I think - amplified by arranging the answers so that ...
flawr's user avatar
  • 43.8k
8 votes
2 answers
333 views

ECMAScript 6 and potential related flags

I know that compiler flags (such as -D for C/C++) are counted towards byte count, but what about interpreter flags? How would those affect byte count? Given that ...
Claudia's user avatar
  • 1,730
5 votes
2 answers
268 views

Are tokenized PostScript/GhostScript answers acceptable?

See this answer. I'm not sure how to deal with this answer. That's the shorter code at this time, so it may be the winner. On one hand, the tokenized version is sort of compressed code, but it ...
A.L's user avatar
  • 1,288
-20 votes
2 answers
858 views

Is this language allowed? [duplicate]

I invented a new programming language, called CodeGolfSolver. When running a program, it converts the characters to digits in base 1114111, interprets it as a ...
Christopher King's user avatar
7 votes
3 answers
534 views

1 on 1 language mappings "legal"?

Basically, what the title says. Is creating a new language specifically for Golfing, with some predefined names and imported methods (I'm talking about my PYG language, but there are possibly others ...
ɐɔıŹ‡ĒÉ„Ź‡uŹŽs's user avatar
8 votes
2 answers
393 views

URL shortener policy [duplicate]

I haven't seen a discussion on this yet, but I also haven't really seen it used in answers, so I figured it was worth asking a question for link-reference in the future. So, what's the policy on ...
Geobits's user avatar
  • 19.7k
6 votes
1 answer
255 views

When is it allowable to change the rules? [duplicate]

Questions frequently need tweaking to the rules, even after going through the sandbox. However, rule changes that break previously valid answers are annoying to the answerer (at least from the ...
Kendall Frey's user avatar
  • 2,473
2 votes
1 answer
117 views

Change scoring type after the fact?

I made a code-challenge here: Implement ROT-47... in ROT-47 However, I think my scoring rules are not servicing the job of the original question well. I am considering changing the question to a ...
durron597's user avatar
  • 4,820
1 vote
1 answer
150 views

Where is the rule against new languages specified?

I'm pretty sure I've seen a rule against new languages, especially for code golf, somewhere on this site - probably in the Help Center. However, I'm having a hard time finding it. Does this rule ...
Iszi's user avatar
  • 2,537
11 votes
1 answer
320 views

Is an answer valid if it works only at the interactive prompt? [duplicate]

My answer here works only on the interactive Python prompt, which writes output to the screen if not stored in a variable or None. Is such an answer valid?
gerrit's user avatar
  • 297
13 votes
3 answers
693 views

JavaScript Standards for IO

When it comes to JavaScript code-golf, there tends to be two schools of thought regarding IO (specifically printing). Some golfers will use functions such as alert,...
zzzzBov's user avatar
  • 3,284
8 votes
3 answers
329 views

comparing fastest code

To compare solutions on performance, we should form a kind of template, what to specify or how to specify the question. I realized, when trying to solve fast line drawing algorithm, that it is not ...
user unknown's user avatar
  • 4,591
8 votes
1 answer
177 views

Should question proposers be expected to have a coded answer before they propose?

All too often I look at questions proposed here and I think: "The proposer clearly doesn't have a running solution to this question." Should we make it an expectation that before posting a question, ...
MtnViewMark's user avatar
  • 4,999
6 votes
5 answers
391 views

New contest type proposal.

I'd like to suggest that to date we have missed a class (or maybe two) of programming puzzles. ai-player would indicate a game played against a defined (but initially unknown) input or against a ...
dmckee --- ex-moderator kitten's user avatar
3 votes
1 answer
217 views

Are "one line" problems distinct from code golf, and if so what rules apply?

How to write a single-line password generator asks for a solution in "one line". It seems to me that this is potentially a different class of challenge from code-golf, and for the nonce I've tagged ...
dmckee --- ex-moderator kitten's user avatar
12 votes
5 answers
845 views

Thought on language specific challenges

We haven't really talked about specified language challenges. On Stack Overflow, we asked that all code-golf problems be language agnostic, but I don't feel that we are automatically bound by that ...
dmckee --- ex-moderator kitten's user avatar
5 votes
2 answers
400 views

For Code Golf, how do you deal with languages without a traditional print/echo statements? [duplicate]

JavaScript comes to mind as a language without a traditional outputting mechanism. In this instance, document.write() is suggested, but its specific to the browser,...
Yahel's user avatar
  • 150

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