51
votes
Accepted
Should answers have to handle invalid inputs?
No, invalid inputs may result in undefined behavior
Requiring input validation only adds extraneous code to the answer and takes away from the challenge.
- 28.9k
37
votes
Accepted
What does "taking no input" mean for a program?
Programs may assume that input is empty
I believe that the requirement
The program has to ignore the standard input, that is, it should work regardless of what is given as input.
is too strong. ...
- 196k
33
votes
Accepted
Case Sensitive Strings
Unless specified otherwise, strings are case-sensitive. More generally, unless specified otherwise, strings are just sequences of characters with no semantics attached to any specific characters.
...
- 196k
32
votes
Accepted
32
votes
A proposal to combat Meta Bloat™: The Big Consensus Freeze
I propose that each commonly-used language have a separate explanation of the rules that most pertain to it, with code examples. I think this is more digestible that a big general FAQ, especially to ...
- 144k
28
votes
Accepted
Are compiler-specific submissions allowed?
Yes, on PPCG a language is defined by its implementation.
In case your program is not portable you should specify the interpreter or compiler.
- 39k
23
votes
Accepted
Can I write a golfing library?
Yes, and it does not necessarily have to be a separate language.
There's no problem with using your own library as long as it doesn't violate the standard loopholes. In answers where you use it, you ...
- 31.3k
21
votes
Are Mathematica's datasets valid?
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 ...
- 196k
19
votes
Should language-specific code golf challenges be explicitly disallowed?
No (with caveats) -- Language-specific challenges are on-topic
Challenge authors are allowed to add other arbitrary restrictions (banning built-ins, banning capital letters, requiring out to be base-...
- 43.3k
18
votes
Are bots allowed in The Nineteenth Byte?
Chat bots (that post messages) have no place in TNB. Since TNB is for discussion of code-golf and PPCG related topics, having bots in the room would be distracting and obnoxious, and would overtake ...
- 58.7k
18
votes
Default policy for output in decision problems
Truthy/falsy using your language's convention (swapping allowed), or two distinct values to represent true/false respectively
You can choose to
output truthy/falsy using your language's convention (...
- 73.1k
17
votes
Should language-specific code golf challenges be explicitly disallowed?
Only allow challenges to restrict languages indirectly via requirements
The one good reason for a challenge to restrict languages is that the spec makes sense only for languages with certain features ...
- 144k
17
votes
New users' guides to golfing rules in specific languages
Haskell
Basic IO
In Haskell, a valid answer is usually a function, unless a full program is required by the challenge.
Even if a challenge requires you to output an infinite stream of data (like all ...
16
votes
If we find a programming language in the Library of Babel, can we use it?
The language would have been created on the date at which the book was bookmarked for the first time
The Library of Babel is basically an encoding scheme: any possible string will exist somewhere in ...
15
votes
Should answers have to handle invalid inputs?
By default valid input is guaranteed
If it's not, some behaviour should be specified:
Any behaviour (but why specify this when it's defeult?)
Handle it in some way and produce a specific value
...
- 2,989
15
votes
Accepted
Duplicates on other SE sites
Let it be. Codegolf questions on SO get deleted apparently at random, so there's no telling how long that one will be there. However, it might be a good idea to link to it from your question and to ...
- 43.1k
15
votes
Accepted
Codegolf rules and boundaries
Answers that use a language (or a feature thereof) that postdates the challenge should be labeled non-competing. From Can I ever answer with a language invented after the challenge was posted?:
These ...
- 209k
15
votes
What outputs should I allow for decision problems?
One consistent, and one non-consistent
The thing I like about Truthy and Falsy is that often you may do things like output 0 for falsy and everything else for ...
Wheat WizardMod
- 95.5k
14
votes
Accepted
If your answer is acts differently depending on context, how safe do you have to be?
Our defaults say that submissions have to be full programs or functions.
REPL "programs" are also allowed, but they have to be labeled as such, and still have to conform to the defaults regarding ...
- 209k
14
votes
Can We Make 0-NAND OR Gates in [logic-gates] Challenges?
It depends on the question.
logic-gates is a tag for challenges about logic gates. It doesn't, and shouldn't, come with special rules like this.
If the person that poses the challenge wants that to ...
Wheat WizardMod
- 95.5k
13
votes
Should a character encoding that can't actually be used by a compiler/interpreter be allowed?
No
People need to be able to actually run your entry. Just as you can't write code with syntax errors, you can't write code that your interpreter won't compile because it's not encoded in a certain ...
- 2,849
13
votes
Accepted
Should graphical-output challenges accept straight up image files by default?
The thing is that not all image formats are created equal. Some are just straightforward uncompressed streams of pixels, and there is basically nothing you can do to golf those down. However if your ...
Wheat WizardMod
- 95.5k
12
votes
New users' guides to golfing rules in specific languages
Python
General I/O
Your submission should be a program or a function. It should print the output or return it. These example submissions compute the factorial in Python 2:
...
12
votes
Accepted
If code fails to compile, but runs anyway, does that count as executing without error?
In my opinion, yes.
Typically, anything that happens during the compilation stage is ignored. For example, a C/C++ program that produces warnings doesn't make any difference as long the executable ...
- 58.7k
12
votes
What is the consensus on built ins?
If most languages have a builtin, then the challenge is too simple
There are some exceptions, for example I like the existence of the Add Two Numbers challenge as a "language showcase", but ...
- 4,321
12
votes
Using resource exhaustion with a semi-deciding algorithm
No, that doesn't satisfy the rules
In many code-golf questions there are infinitely many inputs, which may be arbitrarily long. And, unless otherwise stated, your code should be able to handle every ...
12
votes
Accepted
Functions throwing exceptions: an exception to the rules?
Functions throwing exceptions should be allowed
based on this brief chat conversation
As long as the exceptions can be caught, this seems like a perfectly legitimate way of producing output or ...
- 18.4k
11
votes
On-topic to ask for help with an pre-existing code golf challenge from another site?
Attribution
First and foremost, I have no idea why one of the comments suggested editing the attribution out. If a challenge is taken from elsewhere (with minor modifications), full attribution is ...
- 209k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible