A Contest?
==========
Someone suggested we have a little programming contest.  Well, if you
ever wanted it, here it is...The program for part 10 of my tutorial!
I have nothing tangible to offer, but I can offer this -- notoriety
as doing really well in Pascal programming with an announcement in
comp.lang.pascal.borland and comp.lang.pascal.misc, as well as mention
in one of these pascal tutorials.  The most correct program that covers
all stated goals in the program description will win, as judged by me,
and any other authority which wishes to take the time out.  Entries
should be e-mailed to ggrotz@2sprint.net.  My rules for submissions:
     1) This program MUST be done entirely in Turbo Pascal, the
        focus of the tutorial.
     2) I will take and consider the first 10 entries.  If your entry
        doesn't compile properly on my system, I will reject it
        immediately.
     3) An entry should be sent to me as a ZIP file with unit source,
        main source, and any include files included in there.
     4) Name the file as <youremailaddress>.ZIP so you won't be overwriting
        other submissions, and making me have to disqualify you immediately.

  Judging (in order of elimination):
     1) I will take the first 10 entries that I get that will compile
        on my system without errors, before Feb 20th, 1996.  I use
        Turbo Pascal 7.
     2) Programs will be eliminated first, if they crash my system in
        trying to run them after I compile them.
     3) Next, I will check them to see how well the author adhered to
        the program description.  For example, it will specifically
        call for usage of an include file, coding an EMS overlay system
        for it, and usage of an untyped binary file.  If any of these
        things are not followed, your program will be eliminated.
        Also, note that the program must be written entirely in TP
        code...no ASSEMBLER!!!!!!!
     4) I will send an e-mail notification if your program is eliminated
        for any of the three reasons above.  After that, I will run your
        program against a standardized data file.  I will provide you
        a sample data file, but the final one to be run against programs
        will be a different one.  Both will be in the same format listed
        in the program description.  Both data files will stress all 14
        requisites in data being perfect.
     5) The final judging will be based on accuracy of the program.
        The program involves picking errors out of data, so it will
        be very quantitative in nature.  The program that is the most
        perfect will win.  In the event of a tie, I will look at
        program length to determine the winner.

Oh, yeah.  My sample of this program will not be posted until
the end of this contest.  Don't think this program is too difficult,
because actually, it is not.  There is just a lot of details, and it
is tedious.  I wanted to create a challenging thing for this contest
that for knowledge sake that someone following the tutorial could handle.
Most of this program stresses planning, as described in part 9, the
new parts are only the overlays, include files, and the writes to the
binary data file.  Besides that, it's mainly rudimentary things (IFs,
Case statements, and string/number conversions...)

Have fun and good luck!!!!

