Validators
Validators are programs that validate/test/confirm that a set of input data conforms to some specification. Contest Control Systems typically support two different kinds of "validators": input validators and output validators.
Input validators verify that a judge's input data file conforms to the specifications of a specific contest problem, while output validators verify that the output of a team's submission conforms to the expected (correct) output.
The term validator is frequently used without a qualifying prefix, in which case it typically refers to an output validator.
An output validator is a program that accepts, as input, the output of the execution of a team's submission, and makes a determination of the correctness of the team's program based on the team's program's output. An output validator typically also accepts as input a judge's answer file and uses that to help determine correctness, although there is no requirement that a validator base its decision on a judge's answer file (the validator could for example have hard-coded into it the "correct answer", or it could apply some internal formula to the team's output to determine correctness).
Validators (both input validators and output validators) are assigned on a "per problem" basis in PC2v9. That is, each defined contest problem can have its own input validator and its own output validator.
PC2v9 supports three different types of output validators:
- the PC2v9 Internal Validator;
- the PC2v9 implementation of the CLICS Validator; and
- PC2v9 Custom Validators.
