Ben <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > On Thu, Aug 28, 2003 at 10:04:43AM +0200, Philip Newton wrote: >> >> Reminds me of some programming contest where you had to take as little >> time as possible to do task X. You were allowed to submit multiple >> candidates; the one that took the least amount of CPU time would >> determine your score. >> >> I believe the winner was one that submitted n candidate programs, n > >> 2; one of them actually completed the task and wrote the correct result >> to a file, another simply slept, occasionally looking to see whether >> this special file existed. When it showed up, it would print the >> result. Bingo: correct result with very little CPU time. >> >> (There was another chappy who munged around in memory, overwriting some >> OS bookkeeping values, which made it look as if his program took >> negative CPU time.) >> >> They tightened up the rules for subsequent contest, I believe... > > Yes. I first read about this is in Peter van der Linden's excellent > book Expert C Programming. I would heartily recommend it as one of > the most readable books about a programming language I have ever > read. Go find.
Seconded. And I don't go near C if I can possibly help it.
