The stat() function returns various tidbits about a file, including its timestamp, permissions, file type, and the file’s size in bytes. This value can also be obtained without without using the stat() function, which is this month’s Exercise.
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Modern programming languages have libraries rich with routines, functions, and methods — plenty to pull together and craft the code you want without getting into the nitty-gritties or reinventing the wheel. As a mid-level language, C often requires that you craft your own functions, a task I undertake with eager glee.
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It’s Christmas time, nerds rejoice! Welcome this festive season with a bit of programming acumen to festoon your old CRT monitor with some yuletide cheer.
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No, a tick separator isn’t something you use on your dog during the summer. Instead, you find it in the upcoming C23 standard. A tick separator helps visually split up a long number, making it easier to read your code.
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One thing I take for granted is which C standard I’m using. The differences between the versions are subtle, and the compiler chooses its standard by default. But this choice can be altered for compatibility or historical reasons.
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The task for this month’s Exercise is to extract a structure member from a void pointer for use in the quick-sort compare() function. This isn’t a solution you can readily find on the Interwebs.
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The task is truly complex: Navigating a knight around a chessboard, visiting each square but never the same square twice. It took me a while to code, and I don’t think my solution is particularly elegant, but it works.
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I’ve covered the miraculous qsort() function elsewhere in this blog. It’s nifty, allowing you to sort all kinds of data with your only job being to code a compare() function. Most coders these days just copy-paste this function and call it good. But for sorting an array of structures, more brain muscle is required.
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I first read about the Knight’s Tour when I was a kid. My mom bought the Time Life series of books on computers. It it, the Knight’s Tour program is presented, which fascinated me. After all this time, I finally set out to code the tour myself.
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The next step in hopping a knight around a chessboard is determining which squares from its current position represent valid moves. Code must be combined from last week’s lesson (setting the knight on the chessboard at a random spot) with the movement code presented a few lessons back.
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