my humble request to @admin to share test cases of contest problems with editorial, or provide feature to see test cases during submission after contest gets over…
while practicing one get WA, TLE or whatever error it must show testCases where code is failing similar to codeforces, hackerRank, hackerEarth etc. plateforms…
Reason is simple, during practice, when we try to upsolve contest problem, it will save our time to figure out what’s wrong with our code
whenever we gets WA, then we try our best to figure out corner cases where code is failing, if succeed than its good
but if do not gets succeed than we post link to our submission on discuss, and we have to wait someOne will tell us corner case… most of times on codechef Discuss forum, someOne helps to figure out in which test case code is failing but someTimes we do not get replies…
if we know test cases, then we can figure out by ourselves where code is failing… and it will save our time to post “find where code is failing” type question on discuss and will also save others time of answering those questions…
i am facing this issue to figure out whats wrong with my june long challenge “TWOFL” problem
sorry for by bad English…
Yaa really this would help alot in many ways like it would save our time, lessen the questions posted on discuss, would make us aware of different type of corner cases and more. and it would be after the contest is over, so there will be no problem I too request @admin to add this feature
For WA, yes I can understand. But how will it help for TLE? You wont be possibly inspecting the huge arrays of size {10}^{6} to analyze your solution? Is there some tool or something which helps here?
I recommend you to not post your code on forums, asking for which corner test case your code fails.
That said, figuring out the corner test cases also comes under skills which you will learn by yourself. If test cases are available to you then you won’t think of them, But suppose in your ACM-ICPC regionals you know how to solve 5 problems but 4 of them are giving W.A. due to some corner test cases, what will you do then??
This skill to figure out the corner test cases will come to you only if practiced over time .
Codechef is better as it is.
@vijju123 No bro, i don’t have any tool. In “TWOFL” problem my all test cases were passed out less than 2.3 sec but 3 cases is not passing even in 8 sec… i am doubtfull that may be in my code have any infinite loop… so if i have test cases than i can checkout wheather i am geting ans in 10 min/100 min/…(it means TLE) or i am not getting answer after waiting for long than for sure any infinity loop is running
@pshishod2645 bro, No one “wants to” post code on forums to find where code is failing but after trying to certain level(giving 200% percent) when one think now he cant do anything further, its good to ask on discuss forum to know whats wrong in previous approach rather than skipping that question or trying other approach
No its not infinite loops xD. Since each file only has a single TC, its very possible to get large variations over time. I faced that too. For me, TC 1 of task-3 was failing. Had to optimize my code
Making test cases public, well, to be honest small cases can help. It was an idea for my future editorials to keep a testcase bank (couldnt do it in ltime60 due to lack of time to analyze solutions).
We cannot force codechef to reveal them, and more often than not they are maximal cases with N=1000 in smaller ones and N={10}^{5} in larger ones.
@vijju123, What if the editorial includes a link to the test files? The test files will hardly exceed 6MB in size. Once downloaded, it’ll be upto the users whether they want to wait until “Notepad” responds, or they want to keep trying to find out the corner case without it…XD
He is talking about making them public after contest so the analogy of ACM ICPC doesn’t hold valid. Besides, in codeforces you can see the testcase for which your code fails after the contest and it is very helpful in practice. The suggestion to do the same on codechef is a very valid one.
@sarthakmanna - Its essentially revealing the test cases at the end of the day. While I agree that one can put in corner cases there, I doubt that codechef will agree to reveal all the test cases. Its something the team is very particular about.
Larger ones are not revealed by CF fully. Smaller edge cases can be put up by editorialist. That can be done, but it needs analysis of what contestants are doing to figure out what can be corner cases for various approaches.
@vijju123 I think the problem setter and tester will have worked hard for getting corner cases included in a particular problem… They why to keep a load on editorialist for the same… I mean setter or tester can also give some small corner cases separately with their question for editorials… It will be a “cake-walk” thing for them as they will have spend some time for making test cases files…
So by this even if editorialist is in hurry (which u were last time) then too people can get help…
I agree editorialist can do that nicely… but with help of problem setter and tester the “public test cases” can be made of excellent quality… And they ll be more useful…
Though I also agree with @admin to not to reveal whole test case file as finding your own mistakes is kind of “fun” and a “skill”… Initially I was also frustrated and many people even get frustrated due to not revealing test cases in every contest… But after sometime I enjoyed that…
And in fact now I have hardly any question which was not submitted and got AC even after knowing logic properly… I learnt how to write neat bug free codes… And that is a skill I aquired by codechef…
And even I don’t get TLE’s due to lack of minor optimizations… If I got logic then AC is for sure… though it may take sometime… For eg. In VSN I got many wrong answers due to lack of practice in handling large double values… so eventually “not revealing” also helps… #but as suggested by @vijju123 the idea to post some small corner cases in editorial is very good… And even it don’t reveal the whole test cases file and spoil the fun of debugging…
