>On the other hand, Prelude may claim that it is "uncompilable"...
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.