quality of coding

Hi Matt

Let's say you make it work,
and then you globally replace all variables with $i1..i100 and all n with spaces and so on so the code is completelly unreadable and unmaintainable but it works and the lines are shorter so it wins, right?

Well, the current contest will be judged on:

a) if it works, b) presentation, and c) lines of code.

So if two pieces of code have A and B identical, then C would be a deciding factor and your method would work

Well ... Lines of code is sometimes good factor to decide the best coder, but PHP is not ASM and it's always possible to write something nasty and unmaintainable or something little bigger and easilly readable. What I want to say is that maybe it would be better to decide on the basis of speed (lots of ways to get yourself in trouble with this word puzzle) and memory consumption.

Some smaller factors would be maintainability and the documentation.

If I'm not very wrong, it's possible to write all your code on single row, so ... you can guess where I'm aiming at

Well, I guess what I'm hinting at is that A and B will be the main factors. And yes, speed is a consideration that falls under A.