The Obfuscated Perl contest is a competition for programmers of Perl which has been held annually since 1996.
Entrants to the competition aim to write "devious, inhuman, disgusting, amusing, amazing, and bizarre Perl code" [1]*.
The competition is divided into four categories and each entrant is allowed to submit twice to each category. The categories include;
- The best four-line signature
- Most powerful (limit of 1024 bytes)
- Most creative (limit of 2048 bytes)
- Best The Perl Journal (code which generates the words The Perl Journal, limit of 2048 bytes)
Entrants are advised to try and demonstrate a range of Perl knowledge, whilst being humorous, surprising and deceitful. Code which purposefully crashes the judges' machines is not recommended.