The goal stated in last week’s Lesson is to convert a date formatted in a filename string into a time_t value. The filename string must be scanned for expected year, month, and date values. This process involves a custom function, convert(), as well as the strtol() function to translate strings of digits into long int values.
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Removing redundancies from your C code may not be your first goal, but it’s something you can definitely find later. One example is when you must initialize a pair of arrays. Why use two loops when one will do?
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A recent puzzle presented itself, one where I must extract a date based on a file’s name. The date is part of the name, but my code required I translate the date into a time_t value. It’s an awesome programming puzzle that involves many different tricks.
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The results of the 27th International Obfuscated C Code Contest were announced earlier this month. The code is amazing. It runs. It’s horrifyingly cryptic.
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Like all IDEs, Code::Blocks is effectively a front for the clang, minGW, or gcc compiler lurking somewhere under its skin. While you don’t use these command line tools directly, you can control their options and settings from within the IDE.
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The traditional C compiler is cc. Its GNU replacement in the Linux world is gcc. A better option is the LLVM clang compiler. As commands typed at a prompt, you control these compilers by setting command line options or switches.
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The challenge for this month’s Exercise is to discover those values in the range 1 to 999 that have the highest number of factors. Never mind the math! Let C and the computer do the work for you.
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In last week’s Lesson, I covered how to obtain the number of elements in an array. This process is the first step to emulating the foreach keyword in the C language.
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If given a pad, pencil, and a factor problem years ago, I would have found doing anything else in the world more exciting. Math is not my forte, yet it remains a curiosity. Especially with The Power Of The Computer, performing math exercises is more of an interesting challenge than a mental ordeal.
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C has three looping keywords: do, for, and while. These keywords construct a block of statements that repeat, hopefully but not necessarily with a terminating condition. Other programming languages offer additional looping keywords, including the popular and useful foreach.
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