I often get Wrong Answer in competitions, and when checking the editorial afterwards am still not sure why my answer was in fact wrong. I often think it’s just one edge case or something that’s missing, but am not sure what it could be. I do these challenges casually and cannot invest the time into going deep into detail and comparing the execution of the two problems, so unfortunately I end up lost having no idea why my answer was wrong.
In these cases I end up adding an “answer” to the editorial asking somebody for an example input that would cause my program to generate a wrong answer, but of course this process is convoluted and unlikely to turn up a response.
Since code is already being provided in the editorials, why not also provide the test cases? This will greatly help users debug their programs and learn from their mistakes. I don’t think it impacts cheating at all because people had access to the code anyway, so if they’re interested in cheating the test cases will not be of any use to them.
What do we think? Can this suggestion be adopted?
Note that this was asked here more than 2 years ago with overwhelming support. I love CodeChef, and this would make it so much better - let’s do it @admin!
I think it becomes even more difficult for you to find the test case from the test data files where your code fails because it contains million of numbers. So revealing test data may not help you in my opinion. When you post your query in the forum i am pretty sure that someone will definitely help you to find the case where your code fails.
Well, I remember answering the same question earlier here and will answer it again.
Revealing test cases tend to narrow down our approach “To get correct answer in this test case”. Also, as @hruday968 said, Most problems has millions of numbers. Also, many “Special problems” with online Queries, How will you solve them?? You will get only the final answer, a single number for each test case.
I know other sites like Codeforces share test cases, but Codechef discuss forum is comparatively very active, So you may post questions for the problem you are stuck at. I’m sure someone will help you.
Codechef has purposefully made the test cases hidden, and it has its own constructive reasons for that, as you might have heard/seen in previous threads you saw.
That being said, most of the test cases are maximal test cases. If you are getting WA in the larger subtask, then even after looking at the TC, you will be helpless as it will have too many elements to account for.
Codechef is still lenient. In contests on sites like Codeforces, you have to submit a correct solution in first attempt itself, and passed pretest does not mean passed systest. In a way, codeforces also tries to make you come up with cases and test your code. Both CC and CF stress on same thing, but in different ways. And I see no reason to lessen or mitigate the diversity.