40
votes
What constitutes a "free" language for cops and robbers?
Free access may not be time-limited
For a language to count as free, there has to be a time-unlimited, cost-free way (that does not violate any laws or terms of service) to compile and/or interpret ...
- 209k
17
votes
What constitutes a "free" language for cops and robbers?
Platform-specific languages for which there are open source interpreters / compilers should be considered free
Example: BASIC-family languages
Rationale: If the BASIC dialect you're using has a free ...
17
votes
What constitutes a "free" language for cops and robbers?
Languages must be usable on hardware the robbers probably already have
Though this may change over time, any general-purpose desktop or laptop PC of average specifications made within the last eight ...
- 5,577
14
votes
In machine code, is using "illegal" opcodes a valid crack?
It depends.
If I understand it correctly:
The opcode is illegal in the language specification. This doesn't matter.
The opcode works on certain platforms, but doesn't work on other platforms.
...
- 14.4k
14
votes
Accepted
In machine code, is using "illegal" opcodes a valid crack?
Yes
By the definition of programming languages on this site, programming languages are defined by the implementation. So as long as there exists a machine that can run that machine code and return ...
- 17.2k
14
votes
What constitutes a "free" language for cops and robbers?
Languages for which there are free online interpreters should be considered Free
There is a ton of online interpreters available, see e.g. Where to find an online testing environment for specific ...
- 43.6k
10
votes
Accepted
For cops and robbers, what if the cops' thread is closed / put on hold?
Close the robbers thread.
If a challenge is closed, then no answers can be posted. cops-and-robbers challenges are made of two separate questions. Since we are closing challenges and not questions per ...
- 40.4k
7
votes
What constitutes a "free" language for cops and robbers?
Inherent platform specificity should be disallowed
That is, there will never, unequivocally ever be AppleScript runnable anywhere but Mac OSX, there will never ever be a (sufficiently full featured) ...
5
votes
Tag Proposal: [asymmetric]
Create the asymmetric tag
Currently, cops-and-robbers is used to serve this role, which is an imperfect fit. Robbers typically just aim to crack specific cop answers in standard CnR challenges - they ...
- 49.2k
5
votes
Post a crack to a cracked CNR submission
In some cases the new crack could be more interesting or obviously more intended. But in other cases this could be too open-ended.
Instead, we should encourage the cops to fix their submissions and ...
- 36.7k
4
votes
Viable input forms in Cops and Robbers challenges
Input should not rely on existing custom state
The value given as input should not rely on any other state - global variables, environment variables, etc. - created by the robber. It may set this ...
- 313
4
votes
Can I make a CnR with no winning criteria for Cops?
Tailoring the incentives
Not a direct answer to the title question, but a potential solution for your first example case.
If you want cops to have an incentive to produce difficult problems, but ...
4
votes
Accepted
What are the guidelines for formulating a Cops and Robbers style challenge?
The tag wiki has a few pointers, as does the meta post Geobits linked. I don't know if this is the best way to do it, but here is the general practice we've been using so far (some of these are ...
- 196k
3
votes
Viable input forms in Cops and Robbers challenges
Robber answer should not completely modify the language's behaviour such that passing any solution is trivial
...Which is called a hack, not a crack. It's a standard loophole.
e.g Overriding ...
3
votes
Add randomization in CnR posts as a loophole?
I don't think we can or should ban such answers
You've already pretty much outlined why I think these answers cannot be banned. There are too many ways to make them and any definition we make will ...
Wheat WizardMod
- 95.5k
3
votes
Two CnR with same CnR idea
We measure cops-and-robbers duplicates by the "core challenge", not the "arbitrary task"
For example, in The Programming Language Quiz, the core challenge is "writing a ...
- 14.4k
2
votes
How might I reward a Robber for an especially good crack?
You could add an answer to the List of bounties with no deadline.
Upon receiving a crack with a proof that satisfies what you're looking for, you could then post the bounty to award the answer.
...
- 23.3k
2
votes
Viable input forms in Cops and Robbers challenges
Input should match what the cop function actually receives
or
Input is not a statement
A typical way of stretching the definition of input too far is when said "input" is a statement, and only the ...
- 406
2
votes
Viable input forms in Cops and Robbers challenges
Robber inputs should be standalone and performs all the necessary tasks (including global assignments) at least after being passed into the function
So, for example, given this cop:
...
1
vote
In machine code, is using "illegal" opcodes a valid crack?
Yes - it's been done for years.
Some of the first golfers (known then as "programmers", or sometimes "hackers") would use invalid opcodes to make their programs faster and take up less space (two ...
- 2,379
1
vote
Viable input forms in Cops and Robbers challenges
If the cop's code has a "natural way" of getting input, that's the only thing allowed to use by default
Consider this cop. It shows TeX code that reads input from ...
- 4,246
1
vote
Viable input forms in Cops and Robbers challenges
Input can be interactive
Howto
We need to make a biderectional pipe
mkfifo fifo0 fifo1
prog1 > fifo0 < fifo1 &
prog2 < fifo0 > fifo1
Minuses
...
1
vote
Viable input forms in Cops and Robbers challenges
Microcontroller input can be series of I/O signals
With timings if needed.
Also it can use UART, USB or another same periphericals
- 1,063
1
vote
Viable input forms in Cops and Robbers challenges
Crack can be object, modifed before sending
JS example
Cop's sumbission
...
1
vote
Add randomization in CnR posts as a loophole?
If we all agree that the cops' challenge has an objective winning criterion, we should realize that their objective is usually not to make the robbers find it the most interesting, but to trade safety ...
- 36.7k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible