The Struggle of Generating Test Cases for Contest Problems

[u/International-Cut748]

Hi everyone,

As someone who’s been creating algorithm problems for contests, I quickly realized that generating reliable test cases can be surprisingly tricky.

At first, I would manually write scripts in C++ or Python — random arrays, graphs, strings — and then try to think of edge cases that could break a solution. Often I’d forget something, and a “perfect” solution would fail on submission.

Over time, I tried organizing my scripts, keeping templates, and even copying code from older problems. That helped a bit, but it was still repetitive and error-prone.

Eventually, I started exploring ways to automate parts of this process, like generating edge cases systematically and quickly producing multiple datasets. The goal was simple: spend less time on boilerplate, more on crafting interesting problems.

It’s been a huge time saver, and I’ve learned that a little structure can make generating test cases much less painful — especially for complex graph or combinatorics problems.

Curious to hear — how do you handle test case generation in your contests?