>On the other hand, Prelude may claim that it is "uncompilable"...
:p Most of the time I'll try my best to get the code to compile. If it takes too many changes that effects the score.
>is it only the characters found in the function?
The function is all I'll count. Hopefully everyone will do as Salem and just submit a function with the defined interface so that I can plug it into my test program.
>is the table going to contain what was defined above, or is it a user inputed
You don't know. All you know is that you get an array of strings for the table. However, you may assume that the table is N^2. Of course, I didn't specify variable N (an oversight I assure you, but I've already gotten entries assuming an N of 5), so you can assume a similar sized table as the example.