Using the Judging Utilities

To install the utilities:

If you are not already in DOS, open a Command Prompt (or MS-DOS Prompt).
Change to a directory in which you have write access, under which you want the mcpc2001 directory and subdirectories copied.
Put the judge's diskette in drive A: and type "A:\INSTALL".

This will copy the entire floppy disk, creating subdirectories mcpc2001, mcpc2001\TEAM, mcpc2001\JUDGE, mcpc2001\BACK, mcpc2001\NOTES, and directories with each of the individual problems, and make the current directory mcpc2001\TEAM.

All directories mentioned below are relative to the mcpc2001 directory.

To judge a program, make sure the current directory is still TEAM, and then just type
J L #
where L is the problem letter, and # is the team number as in "j e 12" to grade problem e for team 12.

This batch file will

search the A: drive for a valid source file for problem L,
delete the relevant contents of TEAM in preparation for judging,
copy the source file into TEAM,
make a uniquely named archival copy of the source file in BACK,
copy the correct input file into TEAM,
compile the program,
run the program,
compare the program's output with the correct output, and if they don't match,
allow you to visually compare the two output files.

Instructions will be displayed on the screen, and you can stop the batch file when necessary by pressing Ctrl-C.

In step 8 the files are compared using the diff utility. If the two files are identical it will say so, and otherwise it will show the differences. The output of diff is fairly clear when it all fits on one screen. If there are a lot of errors it may be easier to see them in step 9.

Step 9 is necessary if it is not obvious that there are wrong answers, and you need to check for a presentation error. The batch file uses the LIST program to view both the team's output and the correct output.

Using the list program:

Use Ctrl-PgUp and Ctrl-PgDn to switch between the two files.
The status line at the top of the screen tells you which file you're looking at:
The team's output is in the current directory TEAM (no path shown), and
the correct output is in the directory starting ..\ followed by the problem's name.
If necessary you can use Alt-H to display the files in hexadecimal; this might help you find missing end-of-line characters or extraneous whitespace.
Use the arrow keys to move around in the files if necessary, and
Press ESC or F10 to exit.

If you want to see both files at once using the LIST program:

Press Alt-W followed by Return to get two views of the same file, then
Press Ctrl-PgDn to display the second file in the bottom window.
Use Ctrl-V to switch windows.

IMPORTANT NOTE: SITE SPECIFIC MODIFICATIONS TO THE GRADING UTILITIES

These batch files assume that the following command-line compilers are in the executable path: "tpc" for Turbo Pascal 7.0, "tcc" for Turbo C++ 3.0, and "javac" for Java v1.2 or later. It also uses "java" to execute Java programs. If you are using different compilers you will need to change one of the five lines that immediately follow a comment of the form

rem IS THE FOLLOWING ... LINE RIGHT FOR YOUR SYSTEM?

in JUDGE\J2.BAT so that it runs the correct compiler and executes Java correctly. You can download this batch file before the competition from http://www.cs.smsu.edu/~rcjudge. If you are using a more recent Borland compiler, you will probably have to replace "tcc" with "bcc". In case people are generating old segmented code for DOS, C++ and C files are compiled using the large memory model (that's the -ml option to tcc) because it most closely matches the Turbo Pascal memory model. If you use a non Borland compiler you will need to modify this flag as well.

If you change any of these batch file lines, make sure the source file being compiled is %2.c, %2.cpp, %2.java or %2.pas. The compiled file should be %2.exe or %2.class.

Visual C++ users:

I have included three long lines for Visual C++ 6.0 that work at Loyola under NT. You can remove the rem's at the beginning of the three lines under C and C++ and move the rem's to the Turbo lines. The Visual C++ lines are based on a path to the base Visual C++ directory, set in the first of the three lines. You are likely to need to adjust that path for your installation. Note that the environment variable VCPPBASE needed an unmatched quotation mark -- at the beginning and NOT the end!

Archive of submitted programs

Example: The 4th time that team 7 has a C++ program for problem E graded on the same computer, the batch file JUDGE\NEXTBACK.BAT is called to copy their source program to
BACK\7E4.CPP

Browsing in your spare time

All the judges' files are copied by install.bat. While waiting for the next problem to grade, or even if you do not use the judging utilities at all, you can browse through the problem files and administrative information files by starting a web browser at the local file browse.html in the mcpc2001 directory.

Andy Harrington

Regional Chief Judge: Toolsmith
Loyola University Chicago