On Sun, Mar 17, 2002 at 10:00:47AM +0100, Jerome Quelin wrote: > Hi folks, > > We were wondering if the referees were to provide a naive solution for > perlgolf contests? This way, beginners could really see what the script > is to do (remember Ton's Christmas tournament where only one beginner > managed to provide a working solution - and thus, won). Otoh, I can > imagine golf holes where such a solution would be too much a hint...
In general, yes, a naive solution should be given for a Perl golf contest. The main purpose in providing a solution is not to give hints, but to make it clear what the actual challenge is. For example, the "human sort" challenge was incompletely specified, even after several attempts, and would have benefited greatly from an example solution. For more suggestions on formulating a golf challenge, see my post "Tips on Writing a Golf Challenge" on PerlMonks: http://www.perlmonks.org/index.pl?node_id=82470 Ronald
