Rarely in your programming journey will you encounter a situation where the data you need just pops up fresh, exactly the way you want it. The best situation is where the data is somehow formatted, which makes finding the tidbit you want easier. But often the data is unformatted, which makes fetching that one useful morsel a bit tricky.
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Back in October, the C programming Exercise was to code Heron’s Formula. The challenge required the user to input three values, one for each side of the triangle. But, as I learned since, a triangle must have specific side length ratios for it to be a valid triangle.
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One of the first functions many C programmers code is max(). It returns the largest of two values. Though this operation can also take place by using a simple if-else comparison, it’s a great way to teach how functions work and test various comparison operators. But this task isn’t the challenge for this month’s exercise.
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Among the C language’s slender assortment of keywords you find goto. It’s a branching statement, which can be used to loop or to escape from some ugly programming knot. Regardless, you’re told early on in your C language education that you must avoid this keyword at all costs! That is, unless you want to try this month’s exercise.
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The only aspect of math I enjoyed in school was geometry. Trigonometry was a close second. I found the study fascinating and did well; I received a B in that class as opposed by my usual C- or D.
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A few months back, this blog’s monthly Exercise was to write a filter to reverse all text input. No matter how much text floated in, the filter gobbled it all up and spewed it back in reverse order. This month’s challenge is similar, but on a smaller scale.
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Last month, I completed my series on Base 36, which uses digits 0 through 9 and A through Z to represent values. The use of these digits means that common words can represent values in base 36. In fact, your name is a base 36 value. But what is it?
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Filters are fun to code and useful, such as the more filter in Linux that pages text output. For this month’s Exercise, your task is to write a text reversing filter. This program is a bit more challenging than coding other types of filters.
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I watched the film Contact a few weeks ago. The movie is about first contact with an alien civilization. It’s smart cinema, which offers that communications between species would be mathematical in nature, as math is the universal language.
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Here is an issue that crops up often in programming, specifically when outputting data in a series: How do you separate items in the series and not make the last item look dorky? It’s tricky.
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