Last month’s Exercise was rather silly: Rarely do you need to swap elements between two integer arrays. As Chris pointed out in the Exercise’s comments, “Would it not be easier to just use the array which contains the values you need?” Indeed, it is, which leads up to this month’s Exercise.
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The C language has its basic variable types: char, int, float, double, struct, and that oddball newbie _Bool. Anything else you see as a “variable” is probably a convenient shortcut manufactured by using a typedef statement. Some of these typedef variables are faily standard, including the most common one, size_t.
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It’s not unsafe to use putchar() as condition inside a while loop. If you dare try it, however, you must ensure that it checks for file errors. That’s an area where my own code often falls short.
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I confess that I get sloppy with getchar() and putchar(). These are macros, not functions, but the issue is that their return value is an int, not a char variable. The reason why is important if you want to follow safe coding practices.
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String constants and strings created or manipulated by C library functions all set that terminating null character, '\0'. When you build your own strings, however, it’s easy to completely forget that null character. I know. I’ve done it.
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The two functions required from this month’s Exercise are show_arrays() and swap_arrays(). They’re not that difficult to code, meaning that you don’t need to use the dratted ** notation or perform any special tricks. Here’s how I solved the problem:
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As with the strcpy() function, covered in last week’s Lesson, you run a risk of buffer overflow with strcat(). The compiler doesn’t check for an overflow; to ensure that you’re practicing safe coding habits, that task is up to you.
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I’m amazed, and a bit envious, when I look at other programming languages to discover a rich variety of functions, or “methods,” that do specific tasks the C language lacks. One of these tasks deals with arrays.
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C offers a smattering of string-manipulation functions, but it leaves many of the critical issues up to you. Specifically, you must ensure that a string doesn’t overflow its buffer and that all strings are capped with the null character, '\0'.
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When it was pointed out to me that using the scanf() functions in my online teaching material was an “unsafe coding practice,” I thought, “Well, duh!” I’ve never been a fan of scanf(); it’s an ugly function.
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