This is the Chinese national training team report papers translated into English using several computer tools.

I find this to be a much way to read these PDF papers than Google Translate or Foxit Reader Translate (despite the limitations -- see below), so I think it may be useful to other people too.

Original papers download:

• https://github.com/OI-wiki/libs/tree/master/集训队历年论文
• https://github.com/tshu-w/ICPC/tree/master/references/国家集训队论文
• http://download.csdn.net/album/detail/657/1/1
• https://github.com/enkerewpo/OI-Public-Library

Auto-translated papers download:

• https://nd.nl.tab.digital/s/GqoiQ5b8tpJFrXD

I've only translated some topics, but I will upload more in the future.

Update:

• Better method is used to translate PDF (some PDF uploaded).

此处我们规定球冠不能大于半球，并不是说大的球冠无法被处理，而是因为在提出布尔运算后，我们可以使用较小球冠的补集来表示超过半球的球冠，从而无需讨论这种情况。作此规定可以为几何上的处理提供方便。

• I uploaded the method and programs used to translate those PDFs (previously, the general method is already explained in the remark section).
• I uploaded all the translated LaTeX sources and compiled PDF files of 2020 I've done so far (currently only topic 1 at 2020/1-translated.pdf -- note that the PDF preview feature on the site might not work!; however the source code, programs and methods are all available, anyone can translate and upload them)

• There are some commercial tools for converting PDF back to LaTeX source (Mathpix for example), however they must be paid for and I don't know what the quality would be for Chinese. It would be easier to get the source code.

I'll update all the files if I find some better way to translate those.

I could not find any existing post that does the same thing, despite a lot of blog posts that requests it: 1 2 3 and I find it really hard to copy and paste each line into a translator program (or select each line), and translating the whole thing with Google Translate (or similar) will remove the figures/formulas, so the side-by-side comparison was helpful.

Issues/possible improvements/contributions:

• It's really hard to find a good site/program to translate PDF files. Does anyone know one better than this one?

  The one I'm using fails badly sometimes, stretches or shrinks the text. Sample page (low resolution version). However, it's still better than the alternatives (Foxit Reader Translate, Google document translate), which requires highlighting/copying each sentence, scrolling two windows parallelly, and/or overflows the page width so horizontal scrolling is required.

• I suppose that the original Chinese characters are still preserved inside the PDF; however direct copy and paste results in corrupted data.

  If anyone can figure out how to extract the Chinese characters without OCR, that would improve the translation quality (because currently the OCR is not perfect, and there are some errors).

  (some metadata in a PDF shows that it was made with Microsoft Word 2013 and/or Acrobat 11.0.0)

• The images, math formulas and pseudo code listings are not preserved.

  This is a limitation of ABBYY OCR tool. Although it can be fixed manually, I'm not going to do that.

• You can also write (usually English; however Chinese HTML is still easier to translate than Chinese PDF) blog posts to explain the techniques.

• Or find existing content (in English) that describes those techniques.

For example, currently all submission links on Benq's submissions page are grayed out (at least for a logged-out user); while this submission for example can be viewed normally.

This is a server-side issue. On that page there's this snippet of JavaScript code:

            var viewableSubmissionIds = [
            ];

The bug is not present on the second page -- there are both viewable submissions and unviewable submissions, and they are displayed correctly. I suspect that the bug is related to the fact that some of the submissions are in a running contest.

Of course, the viewable submissions are still accessible using the direct link.

Screenshots:

On the second page, the viewable and unviewable submissions are displayed correctly.

On the first page, all links are grayed out.

I can find this similar (8-year-old) blog, in which MikeMirzayanov said that it will be fixed, but the bug remains.

Features:

• Automatically wrap the tutorial of problems into spoiler blocks.
• Do not wrap it in spoiler block if it's already hidden.

Known bugs:

• Does not work for editorial blog posts using old formats.

Install: https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/402454-codeforces-spoiler-tutorial

On the /contest/[id]/hacks page, if there's a pending hack like this

the "waiting" status will never be updated to successful/unsuccessful, unless the page is refreshed.

I'm sure that this is a bug, not just an unimplemented feature because:

1. In the inspector tab, there's a failed HTTP request to /data/challengeJudgeProtocol:

   

2. Looking at the code that makes that request, it's clear that it should update the verdict once it's available (and while it's not available, repeatedly poll the server once per 2500 milliseconds per pending challenge; however the error prevents the setTimeout from being called):

   

3. When a POST request is made with the same argument format, but to a judged hack test case (either successful or unsuccessful), the result is returned properly.

While hacks are not as frequent as submissions, the 403 error can be seen by visiting https://codeforces.net/contest/1335/hacks -- currently there are 22 pending tests on that page (as reported in a previous bug report).

1. This hack has been in queue for two weeks. https://codeforces.net/contest/1335/hacks

   

2. (also on that page) The time is not localized.

   Actually this is not a bug, just a missing feature.

3. On the "Complete problemset" page, the Codeforces logo is not updated.

   Example: https://codeforces.net/contest/1343/problems -- image:

   The logo should be this one.

   I thought this is because of caching, but the response header is cache-control: private,no-cache,no-store,max-age=0,must-revalidate.

   For comparison, the brand logo is displayed correctly on the "complete problemset" page of the contests such as Kotlin heroes.

4. When a tag is duplicated while posting a blog, this error will appear.

   

   Just a little annoying. Codeforces already have the draft feature, which saves the post content.

Recently I came across a problem (source)

Translated problem statement:

Given a tree of N points and an integer K. Each edge has a weight. You need to calculate for each node i; what is the Kth smallest value within the distances to the other N-1 nodes.

Data size: 1 ≤ K < N ≤ 50000, the weight of the edge is an integer whose absolute value is less than 1000.

The described solution there uses sqrt decomposition. The author also left a footnote (translated):

This problem has a solution with better time complexity but very complicated tree chain splitting.

I used heavy-light decomposition, small-to-large merging and persistent treap, and come up with a solution which (I think) have time complexity $$$O(n \log^3(n) + n \log^2(n) \log(n × \text{max edge weight})$$$).

In comparison with the sqrt decomposition (with time complexity $$$O(n^{1.5} \log^{1.5} n)$$$ according to the linked page), that's not much faster (the constant factors might even make it slower). Is there a faster solution?

Note: This technique had been used before at https://codeforces.net/blog/entry/60851 (editorial code of problem F) and https://codeforces.net/problemset/submission/1017/41357847 .

While this solution is faster than using int64_t (because Codeforces machines are 32-bit), the time limit should be loose enough for solution that does not use this trick to pass. However, this trick may be useful if you want to be very fast or implement an unintended/suboptimal brute force solution. (the same thing can be said about fast input/output methods. On Codeforces, cin/cout is usually fast enough)

This is definitely faster than the usual return (long long)a * b % mod, but it might be slower than Montgomery multiplication.

Given a positive integer md, and two positive integers a and b in range [0, md-1], the following function will compute (int) ((long long) a * b % md): (the quotient of the division is stored in variable d)

int mul(int a, int b) {
  unsigned long long x = (long long) a * b;
  unsigned xh = (unsigned) (x >> 32), xl = (unsigned) x, d, m;
  asm(
    "divl %4; \n\t"
    : "=a" (d), "=d" (m)
    : "d" (xh), "a" (xl), "r" (md)
  );
  return m;
}

x86 assembly has an instruction to divide a 64-bit integer by a 32-bit integer, provided that both the quotient and the remainder fits in 32 bits. (More details)

However, it's not a compiler bug that GCC does not optimize code like this

uint32_t f(uint64_t a, uint32_t b) { return a % b; }

to use that assembly instruction, because that would not work well (as required by the C++ standard) when the quotient exceeds 2^32. See also 64308 – Missed optimization: 64-bit divide used when 32-bit divide would work.

Unfortunately, I think there isn't any intrinsic function of GCC that provides the functionality, and it's necessary to use asm. (source)

Benchmark code: (you can copy-paste that to https://codeforces.net/problemset/customtest )

#include <iostream>
#include <ctime>

using namespace std;

const int md = 1e9 + 7;

int mul_complex(int a, int b) {
  unsigned long long x = (long long) a * b;
  unsigned xh = (unsigned) (x >> 32), xl = (unsigned) x, d, m;
  asm(
    "divl %4; \n\t"
    : "=a" (d), "=d" (m)
    : "d" (xh), "a" (xl), "r" (md)
  );
  return m;
}

int mul_simple(int a, int b){
  return ((long long)a*b)%md;
}

int main() {
    { // warmup
        int x = 34567, y= 4325;
        long long ans = 0;
        for(int itr = 1e7; itr; --itr){
          ans += mul_complex(x, y);
          ++x, ++y;
        }
    }

    int const N_ITER = 1e8;
    {
        auto start = clock();
        int x = 34567, y= 4325;
        long long ans = 0;
        for(int itr = N_ITER; itr; --itr){
          ans += mul_complex(x, y);
          ++x, ++y;
        }
        cout << ans << ' ' << double(clock() - start) / CLOCKS_PER_SEC << '\n';
    }
    {
        auto start = clock();
        int x = 34567, y= 4325;
        long long ans = 0;
        for(int itr = N_ITER; itr; --itr){
          ans += mul_simple(x, y);
          ++x, ++y;
        }
        cout << ans << ' ' << double(clock() - start) / CLOCKS_PER_SEC << '\n';
    }
}

static_assert(sizeof(size_t) == 4, "not 32 bit machine");

Because Codeforces caches the result, you may need to change the input or some whitespaces in the code to re-run the code. When I run it the result is ~= 0.45 vs 0.65, which is a 30% performance gain.

Note: Depends on your coding convention, you may not encounter this bug at all.

I have had a bug in a code similar to this:

void process(long long x) { /* ... */ }
for (auto i = a.size(); i-->0; ) {
    for (auto j = b.size(); j-->0; ) {
        process(i - j);
    }
}

Can you see the bug?

Both i and j are unsigned, therefore the result will be computed modulo 2^32 or 2^64, depends on the computer architecture. However, because process function takes a long long as input, the input is converted to long long. On 64-bit machines, the result ends up being correct, but on 32-bit machine, if i - j == -1 then the received x value is 2^32-1.

In this particular case, there's no undefined behavior, so turning on -ftrapv -fsanitize=undefined -D_GLIBCXX_DEBUG etc. does not help. But compiling the code as 32-bit, enabling -Wsign-compare, or never using unsigned integer types would work.

How to compile for 32-bit machine with 64-bit compiler?

Add the -m32 compiler flag. (Note that if your compiler fails with some message about link failed, you may need to install 32-bit libraries. The instruction is dependent on your operating system — see 1 2)

Another use of 32-bit compiling: Benchmark with Codeforces speed.

Because Codeforces runs your program in 32-bit, benchmarking in 64-bit mode may not reflect the performance on Codeforces server.

In particular, 64-bit integer multiplication and division on 32-bit machines are much slower on 32-bit machines than on 64-bit machines, so replacing a 64-bit integer division with a 32-bit one may make the program significantly faster on Codeforces, but the performance is almost the same on a 64-bit machine.

Note: All of the information in this blog relies on implementation-defined behavior. Do not use this in production code. In Codeforces contests, it's usually preferred to simply use hand-implemented bitset, because you've infinite time before the contest; or bitset (however bitset is printed differently from vector<bool> in GDB, and it doesn't work if you need dynamic size).

It's mentioned in a previous comment that bitset internal can be accessed by casting it to int32_t*. What about vector<bool>?

Method 1: cast its content to uint32_t* (or uint64_t*), but it'll only work when _GLIBCXX_DEBUG is not defined.

	vector<bool> a {1,0,0,1,0,1};
	cout << * (uint32_t*&&) a << '\n';
	cout << * (uint32_t*&&) a.begin() << '\n';

Both prints 41.

Method 2: Access _M_p and _M_offset members of the iterators.

In normal mode it works fine, but in debug mode it will throw this error

error: ‘std::__cxx1998::_Bit_type* std::__cxx1998::_Bit_iterator_base::_M_p’ is inaccessible within this context

In this case, just cast it to the base. If you want something that works with both lvalue and rvalue, you can use

#ifdef _GLIBCXX_DEBUG
	__cxx1998::_Bit_iterator_base& PP(auto& x){ return (__cxx1998::_Bit_iterator_base&) x; }
	__cxx1998::_Bit_iterator_base&& PP(auto&& x){ return (__cxx1998::_Bit_iterator_base&&) x; }
#else
	template<class T>
	auto&& /* decltype(auto) ? */ PP(T&& x){ return std::forward<T>(x); }
#endif

(any way to simplify the template?)

#define private public may work, but I don't recommend using it.

Sample code: computing bitwise AND of two vectors:

	vector<bool> a {1,1,0,1,0,1};
	vector<bool> b {0,1,1,1,1,0};
	transform(
			PP(a.begin())._M_p,
			PP(a.end())._M_p + (PP(a.end())._M_offset != 0),
			PP(b.begin())._M_p,
			PP(a.begin())._M_p,
			[](auto x, auto y){ return x&y; });
	for(int x : a) cout << x;

Don't forget + (T(a.end())._M_offset != 0) when necessary.

Find the first set bit:

	vector<bool> a(100);
	a[52] = 1;

	auto iter = begin(a);
	PP(iter)._M_p = find_if(PP(iter)._M_p, PP(end(a))._M_p, [](auto x){ return x; });
	iter = find(iter, end(a), 1);
	cout << iter - begin(a) << '\n';

Note: While it's possible to change unused bits like this

	vector<bool> a {1,1,0,1,0,1};
	*PP(a.begin())._M_p = 0b111111111;
	a.resize(7);
	for(int x : a) cout << x;

and it would still work fine, I'm not sure if it's always the case. It would simplify the implementation of some algorithm.

Try clicking this link (the domain is codeforces.com)

UPD: The bug is fixed now, however there's another (see the comment below)

You can verify the bug yourself by visiting https://codeforces.net/problemset/status.

Screenshot: (not an animated gif)

Somebody complained that there's no way to know the problem scores (they're not visible on the standings table during virtual contest). This is a user script to solve the issue.

Known problems:

• The score table is displayed in both real contest mode, practice mode and virtual contest mode. (didn't test in real contest mode, but the scoring table will probably be duplicated...)
• The time is always 0:00. Edit: It may not be always possible to compute the penalty correctly, because the rule changes over time (for contests longer than 120 minutes)
• Only support English.

Download: CF-problem-score-table (requires Tampermonkey or equivalent. Tested on Firefox)

Screenshot:

An extension of the blog Efficient and easy segment trees.

Single element modification + find nearest previous element smaller than value

For recursive implementation, see this comment: https://codeforces.net/blog/entry/55083#comment-389949.

Non-recursive implementation: First it's necessary to find any parent of the target node. There are two methods.

• Method 1 (similar to the query range function): divide the range [0..x+1[ into $$$\log n$$$ ranges, find the rightmost range with minimum value smaller than val.
• Method 2: just traverse the tree to the left starting from node x. For simplicity, assume the last element of the array is $$$-\infty$$$. (only required in method 2)

(t[x] is the minimum value in node x.)

#define METHOD_1 /* 1 or 0 */
int previous_less_than(int x, int val) {
	x += n;

#if METHOD_1
	int found_node = -1;
	for (int l = n, r = n + x + 1; l < r; l >>= 1, r >>= 1) {
		if (l & 1) {
			if (t[l] < val) found_node = l;
			++l;
		}
		if (r & 1) {
			--r;
			if (t[r] < val) {
				found_node = r;
				break;
			}
		}
	}
	if (found_node < 0) return -1;
	x = found_node;
#else
	while (t[x] >= val) { // repeatedly go to the left node until reach a parent of a valid node
		if (x & 1)
			x >>= 1;
		else
			--x;
	}
#endif

	while (x < n) { // find the rightmost leaf with value less than `val`
		x = x * 2;
		if (t[x + 1] < val) ++x;
	}

#if not METHOD_1
	if (x == n * 2 - 1) return -1;
#endif
	return x - n;
}

Lazy propagation + find nearest previous element smaller than value

• Method 1:
  • Remember to push before find the ancestor of the target node.
  • The first step is the same.
  • In the second step (find the rightmost leaf with value less than val), it's necessary to push before going to a child node.
• Method 2: It's no longer possible to just go to the nearest left node, because in this image

Assumes the starting node is 26, and all lazy values of ancestor nodes of 26 are applied. The nearest left node is 25, however the lazy value of its parent, node 12, is not applied.

Instead, it's necessary to go to the left child (12) of the nearest ancestor (6) for which the current node is in the right branch; or node 1 in case there's no such node (when the current node is in the leftmost path — 1, 2, 4, 8, 16). The complete code is:

(assumes that push is only for the current node and push_all is for the current node and all its ancestors)

int previous_less_than(int x, int val) {
	x += n;

#if METHOD_1
	int l = n, r = n + x + 1;
	push_all(l); push_all(r - 1);
	
	int found_node = -1;
	for (; l < r; l >>= 1, r >>= 1) {
		if (l & 1) {
			if (t[l] < val) found_node = l;
			++l;
		}
		if (r & 1) {
			--r;
			if (t[r] < val) {
				found_node = r;
				break;
			}
		}
	}
	if (found_node < 0) return -1;
	x = found_node;
#else
	push_all(x);

	while (t[x] >= val) { // repeatedly go to the left node until reach a parent of a valid node
		if (x & 1)
			x >>= 1;
		else {
			x >>= __builtin_ctz(x);
			if (x > 1) --x;
		}
	}
#endif

	while (x < n) { // find the rightmost leaf with value less than `val`
		push(x);
		x = x * 2;
		if (t[x + 1] < val) ++x;
	}

	if (x == n * 2 - 1) return -1;
	return x - n;
}

You can prove that, at any time t[x] is accessed, then all ancestors of x (excluding x) have lazy value pushed.

2D segment tree

Assumes the array size is n*m.

1. If n*m fits in memory, then it's possible to make the segment tree array (2*n)*(2*m) and turn the for loop into two of them (briefly mentioned in this comment
2. Otherwise, if offline processing is available, then just prepare the list of touched element for each 2*n node, build a segment tree for each of them, then process normally.
3. Otherwise, it's necessary to use pointers (dynamic node creation) anyway and non-recursive implementation is not possible.

Segment tree with correct node order

Used when it's necessary for node 1 to be the combined value of all nodes and the combiner function is non-commutative. (usually it's not worse asymptotically to use query(0, n))

• Method 1. Just extend the array to the nearest power of 2.

int floor_pow_2(int x) {
	return 1 << (31 ^ __builtin_clz(x));
};
int ceil_pow_2(int x) {
	return floor_pow_2(2 * x - 1);
}

• Method 2. Store the elements in position $$$x, x+1, ..., 2n-1, n, n+1, ..., x-1$$$ where $$$x$$$ is the largest power of 2 $$$\leq 2n$$$. In that case in order to get the node index from the array index it's not just a simple += n but it's necessary to do this:

vector<int> t(2 * n);
int const offset = floor_pow_2(2 * n); // or ceil_pow_2(n)

int index_to_node(int x) { // note: index_to_node(0) == index_to_node(n) unless n is a power of 2
	x += offset;
	if (x >= 2 * n) x -= n;
	return x;
}

Also, because the node l and r may be on different "layer" it's necessary to modify the range update/query function: (the single index update/query function can stay the same, with p += n replaced with p = index_to_node(p))

void add_range(int l, int r, int val) {
	if (l == r) return; // required otherwise add_range(0, 0) will be the same as add_range(0, n) for n not a power of 2
	l = index_to_node(l);
	r = index_to_node(r);

	auto const processl = [&] {
		if (l & 1) t[l++] += val;
		l >>= 1;
	};
	auto const processr = [&] {
		if (r & 1) t[--r] += val;
		r >>= 1;
	};
	if (l >= offset and r <= offset) processl();

	while (l < r) {
		processl();
		processr();
	}
}

Consider a harder variation of Codeforces Global Round 6 — Decreasing Debts (1266D) where the first way to consolidate is changed to: (_first suggested in this comment_)

Let $$$d(a,b) > 0$$$ and $$$d(b,d) > 0$$$ such that $$$a \neq b$$$ or $$$b \neq d$$$. We can decrease the $$$d(a,b)$$$ and $$$d(b,d)$$$ by $$$z$$$ and increase $$$d(a,d)$$$ by $$$z$$$, where $$$0 < z \leq \min(d(a,b),d(b,d))$$$.

(replace $$$c$$$ with $$$b$$$)

It can be proven that any valid submission to this problem is also a valid submission to the easier problem, however the reversion is not true. It appears that some people wrongly assumes that the problem is this harder variation and try to solve it with a "repeated shrinking" algorithm:

• Loop through the vertices in some order.
• For each vertex, rewrite all the edges adjacent to that vertex such that it's in-degree or out-degree is 0.

If the order is fixed, then it's possible to hack (sansen's hack looks like this, which works with the order 1, 2, ..., n: )

There are some other possible orders, see hacked submissions for details. (if you submitted some code which uses the shrinking algorithm described here, consider leaving a comment so people can try hacking it)

However, if the order is random shuffled (like in this submission), is it possible to hack the submission? If it isn't possible, then can you prove that the expected number of touched edges is $$$O(n)$$$? (Or $$$O(n log n)$$$)

(There's only one day hour left for uphacking! Please be quick.)

tl;dr:

Recently I was writing some code that looks roughly like this:

double value= /* something */;
for(double step=1024;step>1e-8;step/=2)if(value-step>0){
	value-=step;
	// long long code to check condition satisfied
	if(not ok)
		value+=step;
}

While it gives correct answer locally on all sample test case, the result is wrong on Codeforces machine.

I had no idea what's going on, then decide to add a debug statement to the begin of the // long long code block. However, when I add anything there (even cout<<"";) the code gives the correct answer.

Initially I thought there's some undefined behavior, but I compiled with sanitization turned on, and there's no error reported.

Switching to another compiler works well on that particular test case.

Can you guess what could be the cause? (It's a bug in the code, not a compiler bug.)

(Of course if You're given the complete code and debug it for a while, you'll be able to find out the bug as well. The point here is that, can you guess what's the problem?)

Even if you knew about the behavior already (like me while debugging the code), I hope this blog can be useful to you when your code happen to have such a hard-to-explain behavior.

UPD: New version: Add problem title to the dashboard. Screenshot. Now you can tell easily what the problem is, without clicking through the link or add tags to describe the problem (although if you have existing tags, it's okay as well)

A port of the chrome extension to Greasemonkey. I don't use Chrome, and so I decide to spend some time convert the chrome extension to greasemonkey userscript. I know that Chrome is the most popular browser, but I hope this can be useful to someone else. (there was somebody who asked for a Firefox extension)

For now, the user script only works on Codeforces, and it uses localStorage. Also, because it "merges" a bunch of files into one, the resulting user script is not really maintainable. Anyway, as far as I've tested the works identically to the chrome extension (except that the "badge text" does not work)

Because it's not possible for user scripts to add button on the taskbar the button is placed like this instead.

Link: Codeforces upsolve tracker

Original post:

If you visit many different programming sites and come across problems you'd like to solve later, and forget about them later, consider giving my chrome extension : Upsolve tracker a try.

See snapshots here and here.

Upsolve tracker lets you

mark problems for solving later across various sites

also lets you add tags to the saved problems

view your pending and solved problems at-a-glance in your dashboard

reminds you the number of pending problems via a badge on the extension icon.

More features such as activity graph and alarm reminder are in the pipeline.

Suggestions/ Pull requests at github repo are welcome!

It's not uncommon for people here to try to improve their typing speed, or to complain that programming requires typing some hard-to-type characters frequently. There are a few solutions to that:

• Buy an ergonomic keyboard model. May work, but will not be discussed here.
• Just practice (on typeracer, etc.) This may help with the speed, but typing special symbol is still hard.
• Use alternate keyboard layout: may not always be available in on-site programming contests. In particular, Programmer Dvorak layout is not available on Windows by default.
• Key chording: discussed below.

While there are just so many keys on the keyboard, you can "make" more by chording the key (taking the idea from stenography). Then you can bind those to commonly typed keys/sequences.

1. How to bind keys?

   Vim supports key binds natively. Just use noremap! (or just map!) I don't know if you don't use Vim.

2. What key bindings do you use?

   ws = <bs>, uj = (, ik = ), UJ = [, IK = ], df = 0, un = unsigned, jp = .push_back(, jk = <<, as; = sa; = <esc>, fj = jf = <cr>, and some other ones.

3. Isn't that a lot? Would it be very slow to type them during programming competitions?

   map! jp .push_back( is shorter than #define pb push_back. For brackets/special characters, it makes typing faster, so it's worth it.

4. Would typing two/three keys be slower than one key?

   Typing shift+some key is not faster than typing two keys. Also, for key mappings that uses the same finger (such as uj or ik) you only need to press once. (I use some key cap to make it possible to press multiple keys with a single finger)

5. Does this really matter? My typing speed is fast already.

   I think this is better ergonomically.

6. What if I get the order of the key wrong?

   For chords typed with one finger that's not a problem. For others, a workaround is to use some plug-in (vim-arpeggio, for example) (not available in on-site contests), or to bind all permutations (not really feasible for combinations longer than 2 characters)

7. Can they cause conflict with something else?

   It depends. Sometimes I get conflicts, but you can analyze your existing code to see if a combination is okay, or rename the variables (instead of rows you can use rowz for example)

8. What about #define?

   Then you'll need to type parentheses anyway.

The bug can be seen at page https://codeforces.net/contest/1190/standings/participant/26510188/page/2 (accessible by visiting the user submission page, turn on "show unofficial", click any # sign, then click on a different page)

The bug is more apparent in another contest where the user solved the last problem.

(For codeforces global round 5.)

There are some users who submit the same code for C1 and C2, but get main test failed for C1 and passed for C2.

This JavaScript code shows that there are 12 users who passed C1 and failed C2: (run this in the developer console on a Codeforces page)

function sleep(ms){
	return new Promise(function(resolve,reject){
		setTimeout(resolve,ms)
	})
}

async function custom_test(source,programTypeId,input){
	// There's no official API
	// adapt from CF customtest js code
	const data=await $.post('/data/customtest',{
		csrf_token: Codeforces.getCsrfToken(),
		source: source,
		sourceCode: source,
		tabSize: 4,
		programTypeId: programTypeId,
		input: input,
		output: '', // not
		_tta: 510, // ?
		communityCode: '',
		action: 'submitSourceCode',
	})

	while(true){
		sleep(2500)
		const response=await $.post("/data/customtest", {
			communityCode: "",
			action: "getVerdict",
			customTestSubmitId: data.customTestSubmitId
		})
		if (response["verdict"] != null && response["verdict"] != undefined &&
			response["customTestSubmitId"] == data.customTestSubmitId) {
			// var result = response["output"] + "\n=====\nUsed: " + response["stat"];
			return response
		}
	}
}

function lang_id(name){
	// There's no official API
	/* TODO:
		{ // from codeforces customtest page
		43:"GNU GCC C11 5.1.0",
		52:"Clang++17 Diagnostics",
		42:"GNU G++11 5.1.0",
		50:"GNU G++14 6.4.0",
		54:"GNU G++17 7.3.0",
		2:"Microsoft Visual C++ 2010",
		59:"Microsoft Visual C++ 2017",
		9:"C# Mono 5.18",
		28:"D DMD32 v2.086.0",
		32:"Go 1.12.6",
		12:"Haskell GHC 8.6.3",
		36:"Java 1.8.0_162",
		48:"Kotlin 1.3.10",
		19:"OCaml 4.02.1",
		3:"Delphi 7",
		4:"Free Pascal 3.0.2",
		51:"PascalABC.NET 3.4.2",
		13:"Perl 5.20.1",
		6:"PHP 7.2.13",
		7:"Python 2.7.15",
		31:"Python 3.7.2",
		40:"PyPy 2.7 (7.1.1)",
		41:"PyPy 3.6 (7.1.1)",
		8:"Ruby 2.0.0p645",
		49:"Rust 1.35.0",
		20:"Scala 2.12.8",
		34:"JavaScript V8 4.8.0",
		55:"Node.js 9.4.0",
		14:"ActiveTcl 8.5",
		15:"Io-2008-01-07 (Win32)",
		17:"Pike 7.8",
		18:"Befunge",
		22:"OpenCobol 1.0",
		25:"Factor",
		26:"Secret_171",
		27:"Roco",
		33:"Ada GNAT 4",
		38:"Mysterious Language",
		39:"FALSE",
		44:"Picat 0.9",
		47:"J",
		56:"Microsoft Q#",
		57:"Text",
		}

		var extensionMap = { // from codeforces customtest page
			"43":"program.c",
			"52":"program.cpp",
			"42":"program.cpp",
			"50":"program.cpp",
			"54":"program.cpp",
			"2":"program.cpp",
			"59":"program.cpp",
			"9":"program.cs",
			"28":"program.d",
			"32":"program.go",
			"12":"program.hs",
			"36":"[^{}]*public\\s+(final)?\\s*class\\s+(\\w+).*|$2.java",
			"48":"program.kt",
			"19":"program.ml",
			"3":"program.dpr",
			"4":"program.pas",
			"51":"program.pas",
			"13":"program.pl",
			"6":"program.php",
			"7":"program.py",
			"31":"a.py",
			"40":"a.py",
			"41":"a.py",
			"8":"program.rb",
			"49":"program.rs",
			"20":"[^{}]*object\\s+(\\w+).*|$1.scala",
			"34":"program.js",
			"55":"program.js",
			"14":"program.tcl",
			"15":"program.io",
			"17":"program.pike",
			"18":"program.bfng",
			"22":"program.opencobol",
			"25":"program.factor",
			"26":"program.secret_171",
			"27":"program.roco",
			"33":"program.ada",
			"38":"program.f",
			"39":"program.false",
			"44":"program.pi",
			"47":"program.ijs",
			"56":"program.qs",
			"57":"program.txt",
		};

		extensions = {
			'GNU C': '.c',
			'GNU C11': '.c',
			'Clang++17 Diagnostics': '.cpp',
			'GNU C++': '.cpp',
			'GNU C++11': '.cpp',
			'GNU C++14': '.cpp',
			'GNU C++17': '.cpp',
			'GNU C++17 Diagnostics': '.cpp',
			'MS C++': '.cpp',
			'Mono C#': '.cs',
			'D': '.d',
			'Go': '.go',
			'Haskell': '.hs',
			'Java 8': '.java',
			'Kotlin': '.kt',
			'Ocaml': '.ml',
			'Delphi': '.dpr',
			'FPC': '.pas',
			'PascalABC.NET': '.pas',
			'Perl': '.pl',
			'PHP': '.php',
			'Python 2': '.py',
			'Python 3': '.py',
			'PyPy 2': '.py',
			'PyPy 3': '.py',
			'Ruby': '.rb',
			'Rust': '.rs',
			'Scala': '.scala',
			'JavaScript': '.js',
			'Node.js': '.js',
			'Q#': '.qs',
		} // https://github.com/ISKU/Codeforces-Solutions-Downloader/blob/master/option.py
	*/

	return 50; // gnu g++14
}

async function get_source_code(contestId,submissionId){
	// There's no official API. Parse from the HTML of the submission page
	const x=await $.get('https://codeforces.net/contest/'+contestId+'/submission/'+submissionId)
	const pageHTML=$.parseHTML(x)
	const source=$(pageHTML).find('pre#program-source-text').text()

	const tableHeader=$(pageHTML).find('th:contains("Lang")')[0]
	const headerRow=tableHeader.parentElement
	const languageColumnIndex=$(headerRow).find("th").index(tableHeader) // usually 3 but Codeforces may add columns
	const lang=headerRow.nextElementSibling.children[languageColumnIndex].textContent.trim()
	return [source,lang /* short language name */ ]
}

function testAllSubmissionsAgainstTest(contestId,test){
	// returns immediately, print output to the console when done.
	// Note: use Codeforces custom test to test. All at once. MAKE SURE that test.length is small
	// otherwise Codeforces servers may be overloaded
	if(test.length>=20)
		throw new Error("Don't do this!")
	t.forEach(async function(submissionId){
		const [source,lang]=await get_source_code(contestId,submissionId)
		const output=await custom_test(source,lang_id(lang) /* TODO fix lang_id */,test)
		console.log('https://codeforces.net/contest/'+contestId+'/submission/'+submissionId,output)
	})
}

async function main(contestId=1237){
	const submissionsRequest=$.get('https://codeforces.net/api/contest.status?contestId='+contestId+'&from=1&count=10000000')
	const x=await $.get('https://codeforces.net/api/contest.standings?contestId='+contestId+'&from=1&count=10000000&showUnofficial=false')
	const d=await submissionsRequest
	const y=x.result.rows.filter(x=>x.problemResults[3].points>0&&x.problemResults[2].points==0)
	const t=y.map(z=>d.result.find(
		t=>t.relativeTimeSeconds==z.problemResults[3].bestSubmissionTimeSeconds&&t.author.members[0].handle==z.party.members[0].handle
	).id)
	return t
}

Output: (list of submission ID for problem C2. View them at https://codeforces.net/contest/1237/submission/<id>)

> await main()
[62717661, 62729922, 62715435, 62717690, 62726047, 62727939, 62714189, 62716789, 62721112, 62730345, 62719766, 62719548]

I didn't write code to check how many of those submit the same code, but you can check manually that there's at least one by user Simon (rank 242) (side note: that user receives a T-shirt.)

Upd3: Move to greasyfork (originally some dollar signs are converted to Latex), and add some known bugs.

Code: https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/393157-cf-virtual-pretest

Usage:

• Just install the userscript. It will only one when you're taking part in a virtual contest.
• Currently only works on the "My submissions" page (/contest/ID/my)
• For testing, you can append ?always_show=1 to the URL.
• Appending ?mock_pretest_count=1 will pretend that all problems have between 10 and 20 pretests.
• When you register (virtual) for a contest, the script will prompt you to download the pretest.

How it works:

• Fetch every submissions
• Check if there's any skipped/hacked solution such that there's no rejected test cases (like this) (then the number of pretest is the number of passed test of that submission)
• Otherwise estimate the number by getting number of passed tests of solutions that fail on pretests/main tests of contestants.
• After the number of pretest is calculated, it's easy to compute the pretest verdict. The number of pretest is stored for future usage, so it's necessary to download the data only once.

Known bugs:

• Sometimes logging out fails for unknown reason. You can log out manually and then force-get the data.
• It's not possible if there's not enough submission for that problem. (For instance, running the code says that there are at least 1 and at most 138 pretests for problem 566E)
• Fetching the pretest may infall invalidate the csrf token of the current page. In that case a reload would help.
• When the user gets TLE, the "time taken" displayed will reveal that.
• Even if the user definitely passes, the "???" may appear when the number of pretests is not definite on "running on test x".
• If the user is taking part in a virtual contest, it's not possible to view the test cases of a submission. In that case it's necessary to log out the user.
• Fetching every submissions just to get the number of pretests of the problems is slow. (This can be avoided by fetching only solutions in contest, given that there are currently ~20000 submissions but only 3585 in-contest ones for #566)