ACM at Bucknell University
Programming Contest

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Machines

The contest will be held on your choice of your own laptop or the campus Linux or Mac machines in Breakiron 164. If you are visiting us, we can give you a guest Linux account for the day.

Contest Software

We will be using web software written by Bucknell seniors, Yash Bhutwala, Courtney Bolivar, Andrew Wheeler, and Ryan Stecher (class of '17). Click HERE to reach the web software. It should be available both on and off Bucknell campus. If the software experiences any catastrophic failures, we will switch to a set of submission scripts on Linux.

Talking to the judges

Communication with the judges will be done inside the new web software. On the lower right corner of the problem screens, you should see a box that says "Have a question for the judges..". Type questions in that box. Hit Enter to submit the questions. You will see responses in the text box above it.

Submitting Solutions

Solutions will be submitted using the web software. On the mid right side of the problem screens, there is a submit button.

Judging

Its done automatically by a server out on the Internet. The contest tests your answers on a set of known input and compares the output with a set of correct output.

Each program has a CPU time limit of 30 seconds when the judges run it. (May not be enforced).

The choice of error messages is prioritized: (And may not be exactly matching this)

  1. Success (no errors)
  2. Compile-time error
  3. Run-time error or runs too long (whichever comes first if there are multiple test cases)
  4. Incorrect output if any output is `dead wrong'
  5. Format error if all output is correct except for white space, spelling, punctuation, capitalization, precision and so forth
Format error responses requires a judgement call. Hence they cannot be guaranteed or relied upon. They are considered to be a friendly hint.

If an empty code file, code for the wrong problem or a duplicate of an earlier submission is submitted, and we realize it, it will not count against you. You may have to let us know if this happens.