To code a card game, you must start with the deck: 52 cards divided into 4 suits each consisting of 10 number cards and three face cards. Seems easy.
Continue reading →

I’ve wrapped up most of the oddities about structure/pointer/array notation in the past two Lessons (Part I and Part II). All that’s left is for me to go insane and start allocating structures as pointers with all their members as pointers.
Continue reading →

When it comes to structures and pointers, the structure-pointer notation is used only when the structure itself is allocated as a pointer (block of memory), not when a structure member is a pointer. Let me review from last week’s Lesson:
Continue reading →

Structures in C have their own issues when it comes to structure-pointers and structures within pointers. I wrote about this issue a few months back.

Another structure issue occurs with arrays within structures and arrays of structures. It also involves interesting notation — especially when you add pointers to the mix.
Continue reading →

A few weeks back, I wrote a post on the fflush() function, which immediately relieves an output buffer, releasing its contents. The mirror opposite of this function might be another output control function, setbuf().
Continue reading →

It took me a while to figure out the significance of the nextafter() function. Though I understand what it does now, I still can’t figure out how it’s useful, though I assume it has a valid purpose otherwise it wouldn’t be in the standard library.
Continue reading →

It’s been a while since I’ve been seriously concerned about wasting system resources. Back when I programmed a TRS-80 Model III with only 48K of RAM, keeping an eye on memory usage was vital. Today, not so much. In fact, if you desire to write code that consumes a lot of memory, CPU time, or other system resources, more power to you!
Continue reading →

Last year, I wrote about using the standard error device stderr to generate output that can’t be redirected. This technique is often used to send error messages to the console, though I noted how these messages may show up out of sync with standard output. This situation can be resolved, providing you know how to flush the stderr device buffer.
Continue reading →

Stop using the atoi() function! Yes, it’s a golden oldie, often my go-to function for converting strings to integers, but it’s weak. The strtol() function, on the other hand, not only converts strings to integers, it can validate input as well.
Continue reading →

Imagine my disappointment to learn that the atoi() function, one of the first I learned in C, is actually a macro. I’m horrified. As much as I treasure converting strings to integers, I shall survive this life-changing discovery.
Continue reading →