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17 Admission test - Feb 3, 2017
Programming Duration: 180 minutes
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Challenge #1 – hidden in plain sight
Steganography is the science of writing hidden messages in such a way
that no one apart from the sender and the intended recipient even
realizes there is a hidden message. Media files are ideal carriers for
steganographic transmissions due to their size, which is typically much
larger than the messages they hide. A common approach is to
imperceptibly alter the pixels (individual picture elements) of an
image, encoding the secret text by adding small variations in their
color. In practice, these small differences pass completely unnoticed to
the human eye.
A secret message is hidden in image file hidden/sheldon.pgm:
Your goal is to write a program that extracts and prints it!
Input image format. The format we consider is a subset of ASCII PGM
(Portable Gray Map), a simple scheme for encoding grayscale images by
describing each pixel with a number in [0, MAX], where 0=black and
MAX=white. The PGM documents we consider here are text files structured
as follows, with each line less than 128 chars and MAX=255:
line 1: <ignored>
line 2: <ignored>
line 3: width w and height h of the image in pixels, with w>0 and h>0
line 4: <ignored>
line 5 to 4+w*h: unsigned 8-bit grayscale values encountered by
scanning the image by row
Example (3x2 image):
P2
# CREATOR: GIMP PNM Filter Version 1.1
3 2 <- w h
255
112 <- pixel 1
123 <- pixel 2 112 123 106
106 <- pixel 3
117 <- pixel 4
250 <- pixel 5 117 250 110
110 <- pixel 6
Encoding. Let s be the secret message and let k be its length. The text
s is represented as a zero-terminated sequence of k+1 bytes containing
7-bit ASCII codes and is encoded in the least significant bit (bit 0) of
the first 7*(k+1) pixels encountered by scanning the image by row. That
is:
- bit 0 of pixel 1 contains bit 0 of s[0]
- bit 0 of pixel 2 contains bit 1 of s[0]
... ... ...
- bit 0 of pixel 7 contains bit 6 of s[0]
- bit 0 of pixel 8 contains bit 0 of s[1]
- bit 0 of pixel 9 contains bit 1 of s[1]
... ... ...
Bit 7 of each byte of s is always zero. You can assume that 7*(k+1) <=
w*h, i.e., you’ll always find the zero terminator by the end of the
file.
Input (stdin): a PGM image
Output (stdout): secret message encoded in the input image
Write the program in the directory hidden/ in any of the following
languages: C (89 or 99), C++ (98), Java (7), Python (2.7 or 3.4), Scala
(2.11).
Create a bash script hidden/decode.sh that compiles/runs the program on
stdin and writes the result to stdout.
Examples:
-------------------------- decode.sh for C -----------------------------
#!/bin/bash
gcc –O1 decode.c –o decode
./decode < sheldon.pgm
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
------------- decode.sh for Python (python=2.7, python3=3.4) -----------
#!/bin/bash
python3 decode.py < sheldon.pgm
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Your solution will be evaluated for correctness, performance, and
elegance, on the same platform you’re using to develop it.
Challenge #2 – the maze
Write a C function (C89 or C99) that finds a path in a maze, not
necessarily the shortest one, from one corner to another. Here’s the
prototype:
/* --------------------------- maze.h ------------------------------ */
unsigned solve_maze(const char* maze, unsigned w, unsigned h,
char* path);
/* ----------------------------------------------------------------- */
Parameters:
- maze: pointer to the maze, given as an array of chars of size w*h,
where cell (x,y) of the maze has index x+y*w. Cell (0,0) is
the upper-left corner of the maze. Any char different than ‘ ‘
represents a wall that cannot be crossed by a path;
- w: width of the maze (num horizontal cells), >= 2;
- h: height of the maze (num vertical cells), >= 2;
- path: pointer to an output buffer of w*h bytes representing a path,
if any, from cell (1,0) to cell (w-2,h-1), given as a sequence
of moves encoded as: 0 = down, 1 = right, 2 = up, 3 = left.
The path should never go through the same cell twice.
Returns: number of bytes written in path, or zero if no path was found
Example: (0,0) (1,0)
| /
char* maze = “+ +---+” w = 7, h = 4 +0----+
“| | |” char* path = { 0,0,1,1,2,1,1,0,0 } |0|110|
“| | |” returned length = 9 moves |112|0|
“+---- +”; +----X+
|
(w-2,h-1)
Write your solution in maze/maze.c and test it with the given main. The
solution will be evaluated for correctness, performance, and elegance,
on the same platform you’re using to develop it.
Challenge #3 – Wimpy’s diet
Wimpy is always hungry, but his doctor put him on a diet: he’s only
allowed to eat sandwiches in a strictly decreasing order of weight at
any given meal. His favorite restaurant, however, only serves sandwiches
in a fixed order, so Wimpy has to decide which ones to pick. You are to
help him: write a program that removes sandwiches from a menu so that
the remaining sandwiches have the maximum possible total weight and are
served in a strictly decreasing order of weight.
Input (stdin):
number of sandwiches on the menu followed by their weights, one per line
Output (stdout):
number of sandwiches in your solution followed by their weights, one per
line, in the same order as they appear in the input
Example 1: stdin -> stdout Example 2: stdin -> stdout
8 6 4 1
389 389 16 224
207 300 93
155 299 107
300 170 224
299 158
170 65
158
65
Constraints:
- there are never more than 10000 sandwiches on a menu
- sandwich weights are integers in [1,10000]
- no two sandwiches have the same weight
Write the program in the directory wimpy/ in any of the following
languages: C (89 or 99), C++ (98), Java (7), Python (2.7 or 3.4), Scala
(2.11).
Create a bash script wimpy/wimpy.sh that compiles/runs the program on
stdin and writes the result to stdout.
Examples:
-------------------------- wimpy.sh for C -----------------------------
#!/bin/bash
gcc –O1 wimpy.c –o wimpy
./wimpy
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
------------- wimpy.sh for Python (python=2.7, python3=3.4) -----------
#!/bin/bash
python3 wimpy.py
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Your solution will be evaluated for correctness, performance, and
elegance, on the same platform you’re using to develop it.
