Error Messages | Last modified Sep 30 2005

If a submission is not correct it will be returned with the first applicable error message from the following list. A 20-minute time penalty will be assessed for each incorrect submission. The error messages are described below.

1. Submission Error
2. Run-time Error
3. Time Limit Exceeded
4. Wrong Answer
5. Presentation Error

Submission Error. This indicates a violation of the basic contest rules. Teams should never get a Submission Error, but in the heat of competition they sometimes make silly mistakes. Submission errors include (but are not limited to)

- compilation errors (warnings are OK)
- submitting the wrong problem
- submitting the executable instead of the source code
- submitting a program consisting of more than one source file
- using the wrong source or input file name
- including a drive and/or path with a file name
- prompting and waiting for keyboard input (see also Time Limit Exceeded).

Run-time Error. The program crashed when run. Examples of run-time errors include (but are not limited to)

- stack overflows
- I/O errors
- heap overflows
- invalid memory references (e.g., dereferencing a null pointer)
- bizarre behavior (garbage on screen, beeping, keyboard lockup, ...).

Time Limit Exceeded. The program ran (without crashing) for more than one minute. It may or may not have produced any output. This error may indicate that the program simply runs too slowly or that it was silently waiting for keyboard input, but it usually means that it got stuck in an infinite loop.

Wrong Answer. The program ran to completion in one minute or less but produced one or more incorrect answers. A program that produces unsorted output when the problem calls for sorted output will receive this error.

Presentation Error. The program ran to completion in one minute or less, produced answers that appear to contain essentially the same information as the correct answers, but formatted the output incorrectly in one or more cases. Examples of incorrect formatting include (but are not limited to)

- misspelled words or omitted non-essential words
- wrong case (e.g., uppercase instead of lowercase)
- too few or too many spaces
- wrong number of significant digits in numeric output
- incorrect or missing punctuation
- extra blank lines.

Note: Receiving a Presentation Error guarantees that there are one or more formatting errors, and indicates that the judges did not see any wrong answers based on a brief visual inspection. However, it is not a guarantee that the program produced no incorrect answers.