Back in the day, computer programming courses offered predictable assignments. These were number-crunching exercises, which had little flash and, yes, were boring. Today you can plot graphics, manipulate sound, and explore the web with your code. Back then, you’d do something dull like calculate depreciation.
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In his 1953 short story, The Nine Billion Names of God, Arthur C. Clarke writes of Tibetan llamas who seek to know all the names of God. They’ve been writing down the names for centuries, but upon the advent of the computer, they enlist western science to help them finish the task in days. You can complete the same task with your computer and the C programming language, but in hours instead of days.
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The strtok() function is the traditional C library routine used to slice up a string. It has its limitations, however, so a more recent function was included in the library on some compilers to replace it: strsep().
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A handy tool for slicing up a string of text into chunks is the strtok() function. If you understand the strtok() function, it helps you better understand how more complex parsing functions work.
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This month’s Exercise hosts a realm of possible solutions. So I present you with my three solutions, two of which are general and one specific.
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Last week’s Lesson discussed the errno variable and how it can display more detailed error messages. I have two updates to that Lesson.
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Parsing is an activity that programmers are often reluctant to do themselves. That’s because parsing can be a real pain in the rump. Not only that, but why write your own function when you can use specific libraries that handle the job for you? That’s a blessing, but it won’t let you escape from attempting this month’s Exercise.
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One of the C language’s universal variables is errno. It contains a code describing details about why a particular operation failed. You can use errno in your code to provide better, more informative error messages for your programs.
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Error messages have a notorious reputation in the computer kingdom. It’s well-deserved, but as a programmer you can better see how error messages evolved. Like documentation, i.e., the wretched manual (which is gone now), error messages are typically an afterthought in the software development cycle. It doesn’t have to be that way.
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I received an email question recently about the power of the break keyword. The answer to the question is that you can only break out of the current loop or switch-case structure. Even in a nested loop, or a switch-case structure within a loop, break affects only the current element.
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