Binary bomb

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 14:59:23 +0200

Throughout my autodidactic journey of studying Computer Systems: A programmer’s perspective (CSAPP, for short)¹ I have stumbled upon a CS 61 course offered by Harvard. The course is divided in 6 units where the 2nd unit contains a problem set called Binary Bomb. The name of todays article.

Introduction

From the problem set specified here we are introduced to the concept of a binary bomb:

A binary bomb is a program that consists of a sequence of phases. Each phase reads a line from the standard input. If the line is correct, then the phase is defused and the bomb proceeds to the next phase. Otherwise, the bomb explodes by printing “BOOM!!!” and then terminating. The bomb is defused when every phase has been defused.

Computer Science on Farman's Blog

Binary bomb

Introduction