is this cheating ??

[FransM]

I was wondering if preprocessing input data outside your programming language is considered cheating.

E.g. problem 22 has a large list of names that need to be sorted.
My attack on the problem would be to process the list in vi to have only one name per line, then use sort on that file, and feed the resulting output to my solution.

I'm also sometimes tempted to not read a file, but simply paste it into my solution (e.g. the grid in problem 11), just to save the time to write the I/O code. Seems an allowed approach to me, but I would like to verify this as I do want to play by the rules.

[hk]

What is cheating and what not you decide entirely yourself.