The Perl Review #0 Golf tournament - February 2002

• TPR0's golf tournament: base 36 converter
• Note
• Goal
• Rules
• Deadline
• Test program
• Submitting
• Leaderboard

TPR0's tournament: base 36 converter

Note

Thanks for playing!

Jérôme Quelin and Dave Hoover

Goal

Given a base 36 number as first argument, you are to convert it to its base 10 representation.

Rules

• All programs must work on perl 5.6.1 (most likely programs you write on another version will be just fine, so don't directly go downloading a different perl).
• You must assume total memory is < 2**32 bytes.
• The program must be written as one or more lines. The score is the total number of characters you need (smaller is better). If your program is more than one line, you must count the newlines inbetween as one character each. The #! line is not counted. If you use options on the #! line, the options themselves are counted, including the leading space and ``-''.
• If there is a tie, I'll apply the motto: ``The sooner the better''. Date of reception will be taken into account.
• The program may only use the perl executable, no other executables on the system are allowed (the program may use itself though). You may use any of the perl 5.6.1 standard core modules. Your solution must be portable in the sense that it should work on all versions of 5.6.1 everywhere (however, it's perfectly fine to abuse perl 5.6.1 bugs). You must not use any of the unicode specific semantics.
• The program return code does not matter.
• You are to print the converted number on STDOUT, and line should be likewise properly newline terminated.
• You may assume that first arg will be a properly formatted base 36 number (matching the pattern /^[0-9A-Z]+$/). Character set is ASCII.
• You must not write to STDERR.
• The referees can and will rename your program when we validate it. Your solution should not be dependant on the filename.

Deadline

The game started Friday 1st February 2002 and will end Friday the 15th, at noon GMT.

Test program

A test program is provided to help screen entries.

Any program that passes the test program can be submitted. If you are surprised that your program passed, please submit it anyway! That is how we identify bugs in the test program.

For the test program to work correctly, you will have to pass the name of your script as first argument, like this:

          $ perl test.pl <name-of-your-script>

Submitting

Submit entries to Jérôme and Dave at golf@theperlreview.com, and to this address only. Do not publish your solutions anywhere. That will spoil the game, as your solutions are meant to be secret. All solutions will be published at the end of the game.

Please include your solutions in the body of your mail, with the following pattern:

  name-your-script:
  #!/usr/bin/perl -switches
  codecodecode
  codecodecode
  __END__

Do not forget the __END__ token. It won't be counted for the overall score.

Leaderboard