The International Obfuscated C Code Contest (IOCCC for short) is an annual online contest in making the most creatively obfuscated programs in C. It's kind of a "just for fun" thing but similarly to esoteric languages there's an element of art and clever hacking that carries a great value. While the productivity freaks will argue this is just a waste of time, the true programmer appreciates the depth of knowledge and creative thinking needed to develop a beautifully obfuscated program. The contest runs since 1984 and was started by Landon Curt Noll and Larry Bassel.
Unfortunately some shit is flying around IOCCC too, for example confusing licensing -- having a CC-BY-SA license in website footer and explicitly prohibiting commercial use in the text, WTF? Also the team started to use Microshit's GitHub. They also allow latest capitalist C standards, but hey, this is a contest focused on ugly C, so perhaps it makes sense.
Hacking the rules of the contest is also encouraged and there is an extra award for "worst abuse of the rules".
Some common ideas employed in the programs include:
/dev/tty or recursively including itselfAnd let us also mention a few winning entries:
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