Well i see that the contest here you have to submit the entire program.. DOnt you think it would be better where the contest requires you to write a function that takes particular arguments or inputs and returns the results.. SO the coder can concentrate more on the real function of the prog rather than the interface.. Testing it will also be easier and there will be less compatibility issues arrising out.. And this gets rid of people who copy codes from the net..( Well almost ).. The problem can be like write a function which takes the address of a char array as an input... The function should return the address of a new char array which holds all the permutation of the orginal array etc etc.. Does'nt this make things simpler for all..