home / experts / perl

Creative Daemon Contest Results

I'm happy to announce the Perl Daemon Contest winners. Entries were judged by Randal Schwartz of Stonehenge Consulting. There were a total of 15 entries. The list of these entries is available at http://www.webreference.com/perl/cdc/entries.list. A copy of the contest rules are available at: http://www.webreference.com/perl/dcontest.html. The source code and comments for all of the entries is freely available at: http://www.webreference.com/perl/cdc/cdc.tar.gz. I want to thank those that took the time to enter. I was impressed many of the entries and so was Randal :)
Prizes
The First, Second, and Third place entries will win a copy of Mastering Algorithms with Perl. In addition the First place entry will win $300. Second place $200.
Sponsers
Copies of Mastering Algorithms with Perl have been graciously provided by O'Reilly. Cash prizes have been provided by Whirlwind Interactive. Thanks to Randal Schwartz of Stonehenge Consulting for volunteering to judge the contest entries.
The Results

Randal used the judging criteria to assigned a score, 10 being the maximum score that can be awarded.
1st Place: Entry 14 - FilterProxy from Bob McElrath
2nd Place: Entry 11 - pswatcher from R. Bernstein
3rd Place: Entry 8 - lpadmin from Beat Hess
Congratulations to the winners!
Below are the results for all of the 15 entries ranked by score with comments from Randal

Entry Title Score Comments

1 SurfCount 4 nice use of multipart/mixed handling. generates illegal HTML.

2 Microsoft Sucks 2 Cute, and sometimes I feel that way, but I hate spam. Could have used Net::SMTP.

3 titled 5 interesting application! and practical. could have used open/print instead of system(!), saving two forks per xterm. xterm menu bar update might get slurped in middle of an esc sequence to that xterm no caching of result, so a lot of unnecessary output.

4 rrserv 5 high on cool factor for concept. lots of code [grin].

5 alive 0 this is not the "obfuscated daemon contest".

6 baslik 6 practical application. probably works, but seems cobbled or translated from something else.

7 Rock, Scissors, Paper 3 loses points for dis-sing EFNET #perl (grin). ugh - use of `find` rather than File::Find and other gratuitious system()'s for removing a file!. concept is fun. at least the loops are indented. too bad all those system()'s in a DAEMON.

8 lpadmin 7 get this man a CPAN ID, quick! (No space on server is no excuse! :) nice practical application. good reusable modules (even if only partially fleshed out). documentation included (embedded POD, even!).

9 shepherd 6 nice code, although a few of the Perl constructs are suboptimal. practical concept. loses points for C program and mentioning PHP (grin).

10 htprox 6 overall code is tight, and fairly maintainable. good concept (I even did one of these for WT). nice use of a configuration file.

11 pswatcher 8 security holes in sample ini files (user could get a process named ~!evilcommand !). Makefile.PL - cool!

12 mird 6 not using Net::IRC, so a lot of reinventing wheel required. interesting concept, although limited practicality

13 qdp - Quick Dirty Proxy 5 Interesting, but unfortunately we've already seen better here.

14 FilterProxy 9 nice use of modules for leverage. No Makefile.PL (awwww). nice pluggable architecture.

15 isomat 5 good useful concept. nice short code.

Entry	Title	Score	Comments
1	SurfCount	4	nice use of multipart/mixed handling. generates illegal HTML.
2	Microsoft Sucks	2	Cute, and sometimes I feel that way, but I hate spam. Could have used Net::SMTP.
3	titled	5	interesting application! and practical. could have used open/print instead of system(!), saving two forks per xterm. xterm menu bar update might get slurped in middle of an esc sequence to that xterm no caching of result, so a lot of unnecessary output.
4	rrserv	5	high on cool factor for concept. lots of code [grin].
5	alive	0	this is not the "obfuscated daemon contest".
6	baslik	6	practical application. probably works, but seems cobbled or translated from something else.
7	Rock, Scissors, Paper	3	loses points for dis-sing EFNET #perl (grin). ugh - use of `find` rather than File::Find and other gratuitious system()'s for removing a file!. concept is fun. at least the loops are indented. too bad all those system()'s in a DAEMON.
8	lpadmin	7	get this man a CPAN ID, quick! (No space on server is no excuse! :) nice practical application. good reusable modules (even if only partially fleshed out). documentation included (embedded POD, even!).
9	shepherd	6	nice code, although a few of the Perl constructs are suboptimal. practical concept. loses points for C program and mentioning PHP (grin).
10	htprox	6	overall code is tight, and fairly maintainable. good concept (I even did one of these for WT). nice use of a configuration file.
11	pswatcher	8	security holes in sample ini files (user could get a process named ~!evilcommand !). Makefile.PL - cool!
12	mird	6	not using Net::IRC, so a lot of reinventing wheel required. interesting concept, although limited practicality
13	qdp - Quick Dirty Proxy	5	Interesting, but unfortunately we've already seen better here.
14	FilterProxy	9	nice use of modules for leverage. No Makefile.PL (awwww). nice pluggable architecture.
15	isomat	5	good useful concept. nice short code.