2008 Winter Scripting Games have begun

Quoting a recent post to a few ActivePerl mailing lists (post was by Jan Dubois sent around Sunday, February 17, 2008 9:26 AM US west coast time):

Microsoft is running the 3rd annual Scripting Games competition, and this year they added a Perl division alongside VBScript and Windows PowerShell.
The games have already begun on Friday, but the deadline for the first 2 events isn't until Wednesday morning, so it is not too late to enter and get a perfect score!
All Perl entries will be judged by running them with ActivePerl 5.10.0.1002, so you can start using all the new 5.10 features if you want.
The competitors pack is a self-extracting ZIP file containing additional data files needed for some challenges. It is provided as an .exe file (probably so it could be digitally signed), but you can unpack it with normal "unzip" too (this is just a subtle hint that the actual challenges are not platform specific; you just need to remember to prefix the path to any of the data files with "C:/Scripts/" before you submit your scripts).
I'll be providing sample solutions and a running commentary for the Advanced Perl Division to the scripting guys at Microsoft, who will publish them from each events page after the deadline. They should also become linked from here.
So let's show them that there are a sufficient number of Perl users that it is worthwhile keeping a Perl division in the Scripting Games for the upcoming years! :)
BTW, you also have a chance to win a Perl Dev Kit license if you enter the contest for at least a single event!

Comment on 2008 Winter Scripting Games have begun

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Re: 2008 Winter Scripting Games have begun by samtregar (Abbot) on Feb 18, 2008 at 02:36 UTC
Wow, the advanced division problems really aren't very advanced (turning phone numbers into words was definitely one of the first assigments in CS 101!). I doubt any professional programmers would find these challenging. What's the target age group for the contest? -sam	[reply]
Re^2: 2008 Winter Scripting Games have begun by Limbic~Region (Chancellor) on Feb 18, 2008 at 02:47 UTC
samtregar, I was discussing this earlier in the CB. This is the first year perl has been included in the competition so perhaps the problems are a bit more challenging in the other scripting languages. The only problem I have entered so far is the first event in the advanced category. I asked for clarification on the following words: so-and-so wouldn't `woollen&` war game The response I got was along the lines of - wouldn't would be considered 8 characters, we thought we had eliminated all words with spaces so not sure how war game was missed and `woolen&` looks like an error with the list. This told me they were not placed there intentionally to make the task more difficult. I needed to find some way of making it a bit more challenging so my solution is only 4 lines of code (not golfed) and is probably one of the fastest solutions submitted. Unfortunately, I suspect I will be disqualified. I am not entering any more events until I find out for sure. Cheers - L~R	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^3: 2008 Winter Scripting Games have begun by xdg (Monsignor) on Feb 18, 2008 at 18:01 UTC
Wow. Four lines is pretty lean. Is that four statements? Just prompting for a number and reading it back is two, plus printing the result is three and that doesn't count opening the word list file. Or do you mean that the algorithm parts rather than the housekeeping parts are four lines? -xdg Code written by xdg and posted on PerlMonks is public domain. It is provided as is with no warranties, express or implied, of any kind. Posted code may not have been tested. Use of posted code is at your own risk.	[reply]
Re^4: 2008 Winter Scripting Games have begun by Limbic~Region (Chancellor) on Feb 18, 2008 at 18:58 UTC
Re^5: 2008 Winter Scripting Games have begun by xdg (Monsignor) on Feb 18, 2008 at 23:37 UTC
Some notes below your chosen depth have not been shown here
Re^4: 2008 Winter Scripting Games have begun by xdg (Monsignor) on Feb 18, 2008 at 18:28 UTC
Re^3: 2008 Winter Scripting Games have begun by samtregar (Abbot) on Feb 18, 2008 at 05:18 UTC
Why are you going to be disqualified? -sam	[reply]
Re^4: 2008 Winter Scripting Games have begun by Limbic~Region (Chancellor) on Feb 18, 2008 at 19:01 UTC
Re^2: 2008 Winter Scripting Games have begun by zentara (Cardinal) on Feb 18, 2008 at 18:29 UTC
*I doubt any professional programmers would find these challenging. What's the target age group for the contest?* Well with Microsoft, it's all probably part of a marketing strategy, to get your email address, and flood you with deals on buying their super new "Net" IDE. It works well on high school kids. :-) I'm not really a human, but I play one on earth. Cogito ergo sum a bum	[reply]
Re: 2008 Winter Scripting Games have begun by Discipulus (Canon) on Feb 18, 2008 at 08:41 UTC
dear and wise monks !! I hope that you all masters lurking around go partecipate to this evilgeared game and gain the first 99 positions !! i will try on my own but I'm not so tough. please help the Perl community gaining respect and ranking over this ton-of-lines-code-sparsed-step-by-step-in-MyWayOnly profgrammerz the better (Monk) gain! Lor* PS and then devolve all the prizes to the Perl6 project: what a BIG lol ;)	[reply]
Re: 2008 Winter Scripting Games have begun by igelkott (Priest) on Mar 05, 2008 at 23:16 UTC
OK, the Advanced division wasn't so advanced and some of the Sudden Death problems were simply one-liners but the fact that MS even includes Perl like this is commendable. Trivial as it may seem, events like these are good PR. Personally I had fun and was a little sad that more people didn't participate (I was the ONLY entrant from my country). For feedback to MS at the end of the event, I wrote a glowing praise for their "enlightenment" of including Perl but stopped short of promising to buy copies of Vista for friends and relatives.	[reply]
Re: 2008 Winter Scripting Games have begun by grizzley (Chaplain) on Feb 26, 2008 at 12:43 UTC
I saw this post only just :/ Took part just to show there is one more Perl participant - event 6 advanced is primitive :)	[reply]
Re^2: 2008 Winter Scripting Games have begun by rir (Vicar) on Feb 26, 2008 at 16:16 UTC
Likewise, I entered to gently proselytize. After the initial frustration, I got a laugh: mailc.microsoft.com dislikes some of my entries. I guess my Perl code is offensive by Microsoft's standards. `Diagnostic code: smtp;550 5.7.1 <Your e-mail was rejected by an anti- +spam content filter on gateway (205.248.106.32). Reasons for rejection may be: obscene language, graphics, or spam-lik +e characteristics. Removing these may let the e-mail through the filter. Remote system: dns;mailc.microsoft.com` [download] Be well, rir	[reply] [d/l]
Re^3: 2008 Winter Scripting Games have begun by ysth (Canon) on Feb 27, 2008 at 11:18 UTC
The contest faq says something along the lines of "sorry about that, try it again with your script as a .txt attachment". -- Online Fortune Cookie Search	[reply]