On Sat, 16 Feb 2002 11:10:17 +0100, F. Xavier Noria wrote: >: What an anti-climax. Utterly boring. > >Maybe being a mathematician I am a bit formalist, but the challenge was >to use as few strokes as possible, if you didn't use strtol you lost. If >you didn't want to use strtol as an option you are in your right. When I >play a game I try to win, that's all.
Bart Lateur wrote: > So here's my solution: > > use Foo;foo pop > > The module Foo.pm still needs to be written, but that isn't relevant. > > Oh, we can make both the module and the function names much shorter, > like just one character. > > I'm sorry, but I think of using anything that isn't in the core > language as cheating. I think cheating is too strong a word, because the 33-strokers were playing within the rules. And is there a fundamental difference between strtol and unpack, say? They are both functions, after all. If you set a golf problem that was directly solved by a single call to unpack, that would be bad. I don't feel strongly, but I would like the module rule to stand. Just don't choose a problem that is directly solved by a module function!! One of my reasons for the weird nature of the "Get Even" game, is that I wanted to be certain to avoid a "well known" problem, where people could search the Web and copy the solutions of others. I have been involved in all 4 tournaments in the current series (Santa, Ton, Get Even, TPR). So has Ton Hospel, and I would be interested in hearing his opinion, as he produced both a 33-stroker and a 47-stroker in this game. In my case, I produced my 33-stroker in about 10 minutes, without even reading perldoc (as evidenced by my gaff). Yet, despite hours of effort, 50 strokes was the best I could produce without using a module. So I think the difference in order of difficulty is at least 10 times. And I found the no module solutions *much* more interesting and much better golfing. /-\ndrew
