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The Obfuscated Perl Contest was a competition for programmers of
Perl Perl is a family of two high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming languages. "Perl" refers to Perl 5, but from 2000 to 2019 it also referred to its redesigned "sister language", Perl 6, before the latter's name was offic ...
which was held annually between 1996 and 2000. Entrants to the competition aimed to write "devious, inhuman, disgusting, amusing, amazing, and bizarre Perl code". It was run by ''The Perl Journal'' and took its name from the
International Obfuscated C Code Contest The International Obfuscated C Code Contest (abbreviated IOCCC) is a computer programming contest for the most creatively obfuscated C code. Held annually, it is described as "celebrating 'ssyntactical opaqueness". The winning code for the 27t ...
.


Contest

The entries were judged on aesthetics, output and incomprehensibility. One entrant per year received the ''Best of Show'' award. Entrants were advised to try and demonstrate a range of Perl knowledge, while being humorous, surprising and deceitful. Code which purposely crashed the judges' machines was discouraged. The competition was typically divided into four categories, which, in the last contest, included: * Create a Diversion (limit of 2048 bytes if using Perl/Tk, 512 bytes otherwise) * World Wide Wasteland (limit of 512 bytes) * Inner Beauty (limit of 512 bytes) * Best ''The Perl Journal'' (code which generated the words ''The Perl Journal'', limit of 256 bytes)


See also

*
Obfuscated code In software development, obfuscation is the act of creating source or machine code that is difficult for humans or computers to understand. Like obfuscation in natural language, it may use needlessly roundabout expressions to compose statemen ...
* Just another Perl hacker


References


Further reading

* {{cite book, title=Games, Diversions, and Perl Culture, author=Jon Orwant, chapter=Obfuscated Perl, publisher=O'Reilly, year=2003, isbn=978-0-596-00312-8, pages=487–521 — reprints of the announcements, made in ''The Perl Journal'' by Felix S. Gallo, of the Zeroth, First, Third, Fourth, and Fifth contests Perl Computer humor Ironic and humorous awards Programming contests Recurring events established in 1996 Recurring events disestablished in 2000 Obfuscation