Thread: probs with coding

Originally Posted by christop

Why not skip the buffer completely? It's not necessary

It's necessary to handle cases like "[hello".

There was a simple set of rules, and the code worked within that constraint. I did not feel the need to make it more complex as it was not necessary and should be left to the developer to expand the features.

How do you think we feel when people who know nothing think they magically know better. We see it all the time. It's pathetic and frustrating. That might be a good thing for you to bear in mind.

Originally Posted by Ivory348

It might be a good idea, I thought, to re-post my original query.
My query concerned the fact that the buffer wasn't transferring to the two-dimensional string.
(...)
My code by the way performs OK, except for my query.

Your original code is indeed what has traditionally been called "spaghetti code": control criss crosses the code, and is compounded by poor formatting (many statements on a single physical line) and poor naming of the labels (one and two have no meaning relevant to the context of the code), and the use of magic numbers (which you fixed in your revised code). It tends to be harder to follow the flow of control of spaghetti code compared to well structured code, e.g., compare it to Structure's code in post #7 where the flow of control through the loop is clear.

Also, as you may have found out from now, EOF is a constant, so !EOF is also a constant, i.e., zero.

Originally Posted by Ivory348

I thought Structure's improvement of my code was brilliant. I could never have done what he did.

It is good, but it isn't brilliant: as I mentioned, this is a common technique. Now that you've seen it, hopefully you can now do what he did (But refer to my comments on the oversights and poor style.)

Originally Posted by Ivory348

int ch; or chr ch, makes no difference to the running of the code.

That's probably because for your compiler, char is signed. On another compiler in which char is unsigned, it will make a difference.

Hi Laserlight, you responded to text that I removed again after less than a minute!! By the way, I did re-compile my old code with another compiler, and found only minor twitches. But ok, your messages are well received. I will mend my spaghetti-ways. The old fox will need to learn new tricks.

Originally Posted by john.c

How do you think we feel when people who know nothing think they magically know better. We see it all the time. It's pathetic and frustrating. That might be a good thing for you to bear in mind.

As to coding, I will never, and have never, stated that I know better. My remark, to which you referred, was *psychological* in nature. What I will bear in mind though, in response to what you wrote, is that the culture on this forum has long toes.

Originally Posted by Ivory348

The objective of the code was to create an array to be subsequently sorted.
So printing to the console was not the objective. Why assume a different objective?

You did not state that. In post #6, you stated: "I wish to extract those [ .... ] strings and print them." Hence, this is your objective: printing to the console. You might have a different objective in mind, but if you don't state it or if you keep deleting the text in which you stated it, people simply won't know.

The problem with christop's suggestion is that you stated "extract those [ .... ] strings", which presumably implies that a string like "[hello" should not have "hello" extracted and printed, but using christop's approach of printing characters immediately instead of building a string, "hello" will be printed because the lack of the "]" will not be detected until after "hello" has been printed.

Originally Posted by Ivory348

Why look for circumstances that would make Structure's code break down?

We should always look for circumstances that would make our code break down. The fact is, none of us are perfect, so it's unlikely that we will write perfect non-trivial code the first time round, so we should look for ways that our code is imperfect so as to improve it.

Originally Posted by Ivory348

The writer of the original code knows precisely what the parameters are,
your break-up texts are never going to occur. So why inoculate code for things
that are not going to happen?

That's the kind of thinking that led us to the now-obsolete gets function, which is inherently insecure because you have to trust the user to do exactly as the programmer expects. So, in order to write correct and secure programs, we should "inoculate" code for things that we might think aren't going to happen, but remains possible. A user entering string input too long for an array of char certainly is one common example.

Originally Posted by Structure

Your code looks like a child wrote it. In fact it never works and its always crap. My code continues to supply results and that is what matters. Just stfu already and have some respect for people in general.

Stop this nonsense. Now. If you didn't notice, I've reprimanded Hodor for making a personal attack Ivory348. Take this as your own reprimand.

Originally Posted by Structure

There has been multiple posts of mine that were deleted for whatever reason they seem fit.

It's simple: you're insulting people and making useless comments that will likely rile up people like john.c. john.c's posts have been deleted likewise.