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0 votes
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Hello,

I (and others) are noticing challenge checkers seem to be timing out when a cacher gets to around 20k caches.

I can confirm this with http://project-gc.com/Challenges/GC5KQMB/8166 and CuteLilFuzzyMonkey versus sloth96

http://project-gc.com/Challenges/GC5P2FZ/14276 with CuteLilFuzzyMonkey versus sloth96

Likewise, it appears in some of the checkers under development.

Comments have come to me from a couple of CO's that they cannot check people finding their caches.

Can others confirm this is going on?

Thanks.
in Bug reports by sloth96 (3.8k points)

2 Answers

0 votes
Whether a checker will time out for a given cacher or not depends on a combination of of how that particular checker is written and how many finds the cacher has as well as (at least in some cases) the exact combination of finds that cacher has.

I have run many checkers for people with six-digit number of finds successfully. It's not impossible as such, but some checkers are more complicated than others and may need to resort to performance-enhancing tricks in order to accomodate cachers with a high number of finds.

These two checkers are about finding any of a long list of words in the cache titles of caches the cacher has found. This means that the script needs to do a loop within a loop and that may quickly get ugly, performance-wise.

In order to solve this, you need to talk to the script writer (GentlePurpleRain) and ask if the script can be better optimized (it's the same script for both challenges). (I'll also note that this is something of a corner case since this type of challenge is no longer allowed for publication.)
by pinkunicorn (Moderator) (194k points)
I believe you are missing the points of the request which is to A) make people aware that some users are having issues.
b) Start identifying cases so API developers, Script developers, and Tag developers can start fixing them.
c) Identify scripts tag developers might wish to avoid.
0 votes
The checkers for the above challenge caches are not even adequate. They miss about a million foods and palindromes from other languages. The challenges are not determinate, and a checker for either is not possible.
by the Seagnoid (Expert) (46.3k points)
edited by the Seagnoid (Expert)
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