Today is May 1^st. It’s the 121^st day of the year 2017. In 2016, May 1 was the 122^nd day of the year, because 2016 was a leap year. You can look up this information on a calendar or, more disappointingly, use Google. You can also write code that does the calculation for you, which is this month’s Exercise.
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Of all the annual holidays, Easter is the most difficult date to predict. It’s always a Sunday, but which one? It could land in March or April. Most people look at a calendar or (these days) use Google to find out when Easter occurs. Yet, you can write a program that tells you exactly when Easter falls.
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The brutal winter continues in my area, with no end in site! I saved weather data collected for 31 days from December to January in a CSV file. This file was used in last month’s Exercise. For this month’s Exercise, your job is to read the same data file, but also to report on the results.
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Of all the common file formats, the CSV is probably the oldest one still in use. It’s a plain text file, so the formatted data appears is readable by humans: Each line is a record. Each field is separated by a single comma.
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This month’s Exercise was originally how to create a structure pointer, fill it with data, and write that data to a file. It’s a procedure fraught with traps and peril. What’s even more challenging is when you’re presented with this type of code and it doesn’t work, but it’s your job to fix it.
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In your fancy, new game, the program dutifully track players and their scores. When the game is over, or at the end of a round, the players not only want to know their scores, but where each sits in the overall ranking. That process takes a bit more coding than just spitting out the scores.
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I believe two reasons exist for creating functions. The first is repetition; when you have a chunk of code that duplicates several times, it’s best to shove it off into a function where it can be called repeatedly. The second reason is readability.
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In the C language, it’s called typecasting: A variable of one type — for an instant — masquerades as another variable type. In Hollywood, however, it’s a curse: The typecast actor can play roles other than the one he’s famous for creating. That sucks.
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The game of Tic-Tac-Toe, also called Noughts and Crosses, provides a fertile field to plow for any budding programmer. It involves a matrix (array), logic, decisions, and all sorts of fun. If you haven’t yet coded your own Tic-Tac-Toe game, I urge you to do so, but that’s not the topic for this month’s Exercise.
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When you type a credit card number on a website, or scan the card into a physical device, a quick calculation is performed to ensure that the card number is valid. This check happens before the bank is contacted to verify the account and the amount. The technique used to perform the quick calculation is known as the MOD 10 algorithm.
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