Personaly, when I'm not sure if a student is asking me a quesstion of their own or a homework question, I simply sign the work. I have had students that handed in things to teachers that I knew well that had a (* JMM *) in them -- and that was unmistakably in my style besides. (I tend to use a very odd style -- esp when I'm writing in Pascal.)

While that's not directly relevant here -- few teachers would have a clue what a "# PM" would indicate, and few students would be stupid enough to leave it there.

Really, it isn't our job to keep students from cheating here. It is the teacher's job, and if the teacher can't tell between the code of one student from that of another, they deserve what they get. Unfornatly, everyone with a degree suffers when someone who shouldn't have a degree gets one, and not all teachers are good. Really, what the world needs is a good library of code that teachers know how to check. Unfornatly, any solution that relies on teachers being decent is doomed.

Since higher education relies on teachers being good, I am forced to accept that the problem is unsolvable.

How's that for an uplifting node?