In last week’s Lesson, I reviewed the switch-case structure and how declared constants aren’t truly the kind of constant a case statement requires. This week I continue my exploration of switch-case, with an interesting and surprising quirk of the default condition.
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Calculating a factorial is a common programming exercise, often coupled with introducing the concept of recursion. Mathematically, the factorial has a twin: the subfactorial. Its calculation can be a fun programming challenge, which is the subject of this month’s Exercise.
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The switch-case construction, or switch statement, provides your code with a decision tree that both easy to read and to debug. This construction is a bit daunting for the beginner, but becomes more familiar as you use it. It’s not without its quirks.
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Programs use environment variables, thanks to the getenv() function shown in last week’s Lesson. They can also create their own environment variables, reset variable values, and remove variables.
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The operating system’s environment provides temporary storage for variables, settings, and options. These values are easily accessible from any C program. One of the first posts I made on this blog was about accessing the environment. Time to revisit.
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This month’s Exercise presents what I often refer to as a code “toggle.” Many paths lead to a solution.
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When I teach C programming, I’m careful to admonish beginners about the difference between the = (assignment) and == (is equal to) operators. Yet there are times when these two operators collaborate.
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One of my pastimes is watching math videos. I was a terrible math student, but I enjoy the videos. Occasionally a concept is presented that I can program in C. This month’s Exercise covers one of these concepts.
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As with all language updates, things change. Some of these items are deprecated while others are outright removed. Here’s the list.
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While other programming languages seem to improve and update in great leaps, C moves at a glacial pace. The C23 upgrade offers a few new and exciting features, but nothing I would call impressive or awesome.
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