Doesnt encourage thinking about edge cases.Also, what if lot of edge cases there?
@admin @vijju123 If you are considering this I have a suggestion, how about introduce something like buying test cases using discuss karma (ofcourse after contests get over). Since discuss karma now donât fetch you goodies, it would be good to introduce them as an exchange of test cases. Even if people start mining karma (though I doubt they would) It wonât do much harm in any case.
Doesnt address main things like âMost of TC are huge and hence of no use.â Also, instead of buting using karma, the present system of asking n awarding karma is better and more sustainable 
Yeah, but it helps in the following cases:
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- deciding whether solution would have passed through just optimizations or it was an edge case. It has mostly happens when I submit using python (like passing 19 out of 20 test cases).
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- many of the codechef questions have a testcase file comprised of various test cases(which individually may not be very large to deal with). We can just find the failing case using diff of expected answer and my answer.
Buying using karma may promote more engagement with the discuss community. Also this will help in the case where beginners wonât be able to harm themselves by just looking at the test cases. There is a +ve covariance between ratings and karma to some extent.
I would take sides with @admin in this debate.
The only case when releasing the test cases is useful is when your code is failing in small test cases which you can verify by going through your code and debug.
One of the important skill I learnt from the course Algorithmic Toolbox from Coursera is stress testing .
The basic idea is that for problems where you can easily create brute force solutions (which are guaranteed to work for small inputs) and want to debug your faster approach . You generate test cases and send it both these and compare the output.
I have personally used it to debug a lot of problems in long contests.
this is a question
Please somebody explain how to generate INPUT TEST CASES FILE(in.txt) and how this is different from custom inputs,and own generated simple test cases using loops and adjustments.
Yes hemant_dhanuka rightly said you stole my words⌠this is exactly what i want to convey to admin please please make test cases public after the contest is overâŚsince sept17 when is started coding i can think about number of good problems which i lefted just because there was no way lefted to do them even after attempting them so hard⌠editorials helps a lot they give us a more or less same or different approach which makes us learn new things sometimes but this question remain unanswered âwhat is wrong with this approachâŚwhat isâŚâ and asking this question on forums is silly since how can anybody give time to your code as much as you have given and you understands it better than the reader⌠there are some points about why test cases should be reavealed like russian website codeforces
(1). when somebody have tried a particular approach and have synchronised each part of code seperately and days have been spent on that.
(2). somebody may not have good friends(coders) around him in colleges so no source of help except website.
my request to good/experienced coders please advise me
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While I think keeping the judging test cases confidential is appropriate, there is a case for having some more challenging small test cases (if applicable to the problem) in editorials, or perhaps even directly in the practice version of the problem. Often the sample test cases given donât do much more than test input and output formats.
I also like the idea of reporting test case results as happens in the %age pass problems - itâs a little frustrating to âgo backâ to a one-state report after problems where you get a table of outputs. Some kind of indication of the scale of the test case might make this even more useful.