Thread: Question, Im very new

Alright, I am planning on writing a program to encrypt text using the Caesar cipher. To do this I was planning on isolating each character and then performing the operations to encrypt on that character. However I do not know how to isolate that character from the inputed text.
How would I do that?
Is there a better way?

I am sorry, but I have never done any real programming. I know HTML and Basic pretty well. But that dose not compare to C.

You need to learn how to walk before you run. Get a decent text on the C programming language, learn it, and then try your program. As for a text, since you have done some programming, I think The C Programming Language Second Edition, by Brian Kernighan & Dennis Ritchie might be good for you. It is pretty much the standard for C programming texts.

Originally Posted by Penguinlord

Alright, I am planning on writing a program to encrypt text using the Caesar cipher. To do this I was planning on isolating each character and then performing the operations to encrypt on that character. However I do not know how to isolate that character from the inputed text.
How would I do that?
Is there a better way?

There is no better way - the algorithm for an efficient Caesar cipher, is the same, in any language.

in C, there are no strings - almost. Each char is already separated from the others, so instead of this, in BASIC:

Code:

FOR i = 1 TO LEN(string$) STEP 1
 mychar$ = MID$(string$, i, 1) 
NEXT i

C does this:
char string[] = {"Once a jolly swagman"}; //compiler will count the spaces needed

for(i = 0; i <= strlen(string); i++)  //you should #include <string.h> when using strlen()
  mychar = string[i];                      //the name of the array is it's base address in C


//curly braces are optional if the parent expression has just one child 
//expression:

length = strlen(string);    //this is more efficient than re-calculating 
for(i = 0; i <= length; i++) {  //strlen(string) within the for loop
  mychar = string[i];
}

Enjoy C, and welcome to the forum.

Originally Posted by iMalc

Err... no!
If you were looking for an analogy to support that idea I would have used: "Sometimes you have to be thrown out of the nest to learn how to fly."

But no, being thrown in the deep end in programming is seldom a good idea.

And yet you'd think, with all the students coming in saying "Our teacher just gave this linked list assignment and doesn't teach us anything...so what's a loop?" it happens all the time.

As a former lifeguard and water safety instructor, I can tell you, it's not the way to learn to swim, either.