Of course computers can do math! Of course, programming has some math in it! Yet one reason that programmers are not necessarily geniuses at math is that it’s the computer that does the math, not the programmer. To prove that truth, why not code your very own calculator program?
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Data is is just data. Organize that data and it becomes information. When it comes to organizing data in the C language, the first tool you probably learned was the array.
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Centering text is one of those basic things many programmer’s have to deal with. Yet once you write the function, you might forget about something I called bounds checking. After all, who would ever pass a string to a centering function where that string would be wider than the field in which it’s centered?
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It’s not the first thing you think of when you design output. No, it’s one of those afterthoughts, those numerous, “Hey, I could do this” moments that programmers experience time and again. In this case, the concept is centering a chunk of text.
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As a programmer, you’re used to seeing values like 1000 or 1234999. Your users aren’t. They prefer to see values presented as 1,000 or 1,234,999.01. Or, in Europe the format may look like this 1.000 or 1.234.999,01.
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In late September and early October, I wrote a series of lessons on how the various printf() formatting commands are used. Now it’s time to put your skills to the test.
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When it comes to editing text, the concept of copy and paste is an old one: You select a chunk of text, choose its new location, then paste in the text. The surrounding text jiggles around to make room. Neat and tidy.
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The C language is rather weak when it comes to array functions. In fact, as far as I know, the standard library doesn’t contain a single array function.
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A Caesarian Cipher is one of the simplest, weakest forms of encryption. Supposedly developed by Julius Caesar, it’s a letter substitution cipher: A becomes C, B becomes D, C becomes E, and so on.
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The game of Tic-Tac-Toe is played on a simple 3-by-3 grid, what C programmers would call a matrix. It’s not The Matrix, of course, but it’s a simple array in which players can battle.
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