#include <iostream> using namespace std; int main() { char yourname; int age; cout<<"First C++ Program... That does nothing cool.\n"; cout<<"Go ahead and enter your name. "; cin>> yourname; cout<<"Your name is " << yourname << ", huh? hmm..\n"; cout<<"So, how old are you, "<< yourname <<"? "; cin>> age; cin.ignore(); cout<<"You are "<< age << " years old, eh? "; if (age > 21) { cout<<"That's gettin pretty old\n"; } else { cout<<"C++ for little people!!!\n"; } cin.get(); }

EDIT: ok, i have just learned something. char only excepts one character, am i right? because if i enter only 1 letter for yourname then it works. i'm pretty sure i tried that before i posted on here and it didnt work... i think it was having a problem building the new exe.

So, what do they call a string in c++?

------------------
~~~boogie woogie woogie~~~

[This message has been edited by bwoogie (edited January 23, 2007).]

[This message has been edited by bwoogie (edited January 23, 2007).]

[This message has been edited by bwoogie (edited January 23, 2007).]

EDIT: oh yeah, forgot to say that all strings are terminated with a '\0' character (null character). thats how the compiler knows that the string is ending (otherwise it would assume that it continues past just your text).

[This message has been edited by jestermax (edited January 23, 2007).]

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It's nice to be important, but it's more important to be nice !

quote:

---

Originally posted by jestermax:
in c and c++, a string is an array of characters or char[]. there IS a string wrapper class in the standard library but i'd suggest getting to know character arrays before moving on to them

---

ok! thanks. so, is there a way to allow it to have an unlimited length?

------------------
~~~boogie woogie woogie~~~

bwoogie: I've been doing C++ a total of 3 days now, so beware. You forgot cin.ignore after "Cin >> yourname". Not much else I can say though.

------------------
MM out-
Thought travels much faster than sound, it is better to think something twice, and say it once, than to think something once, and have to say it twice.
"Frogs and Fauns! The tournament!" - Professor Winneynoodle/HanClinto

------------------
~~~boogie woogie woogie~~~

quote:

---

Originally posted by bwoogie:
ok! thanks. so, is there a way to allow it to have an unlimited length?

---

A char array is always going to point to some fixed amount of memory on the heap or the stack.

The std::string object is the easiest way to get an unlimited string for inputs.

Make sure to have this line near the top:
#include <string>

create it like this:
string yourname;

read in a single word like this:
cin>>yourname;

or read in a line like this:
getline(cin, yourname);

------------------
+---------+
|steveth45|
+---------+

------------------
MM out-
Thought travels much faster than sound, it is better to think something twice, and say it once, than to think something once, and have to say it twice.
"Frogs and Fauns! The tournament!" - Professor Winneynoodle/HanClinto

If you are wanting to learn c++ and not c per se, stick with the "string" type and don't forget #include <string>

Check out this tutorial for more details.

EDIT: Nice synopsis steveth

------------------
Sam Washburn

[This message has been edited by samw3 (edited January 23, 2007).]

------------------
~~~boogie woogie woogie~~~

theres actually no "real" way to have an unlimited length string. it SEEMS that way, but behind the scenes the string works like a vector object (which you'll get into later so don't worry about it).

as samw3 brought up, you'll probably want to stick to strings while you're learning c++. i won't jump ahead any more then i did. *zips mouth*

as for you problem bwoogie , i don't want to make things more complicated than they are to you but in stream i/o (which i don't like to use),there is lots of problem with getting just one char from the keyboard because you really are reading from a stream buffer not the keyboard.

some programs include the header file #include<conio.h> and put the getch() function at the end of the code, then it will work just fine or include #include<stdlib.h> and put system(PAUSE) (i haven't used this one).

and to explain to you what arrays are incase you don't know they are just a way of grouping similar data types.

so as you noted char holds just one character but a character array of 32 chars holds 32 characters hence a string. and when you declare a c style string you do it like char x[33]; as you see i made it 33 instead of 32 because we need an extra place for the end-of-string character which is '\0' that's how you compiler could tell that it reached the end of your string other wise you would be seeing gibberish stuff at the end of your string.

------------------
Matthew(22:36-40)"Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."
Whose Son Is the Christ

------------------
~~~boogie woogie woogie~~~

------------------
Sam Washburn

int functions return integers
void returns nothing
ect.
right?

pointers? i fear pointers... i know they are supposed to be fairly easy to understand but the people who tried to teach me before on another board didnt do a very good job... haha.

------------------
~~~boogie woogie woogie~~~

Here's a quick run through. Arrays have an index right? a[10] = 5; 10 is the index. 5 is the value.

Now, imagine you have an array that is the size of your entire computer's memory, then the index would be the actual memory location of the value.

now with arrays we can use a variable to reference an index like this:

int i = 10;
a[i] = 5;

pointers allow us to assign the *memory location* of a variable to another variable, just like an index.

So here goes the quick run through

int *i; // the asterisk(*) defines i as a pointer to an int
int j = 5; // a regular variable
i = &j; // the ampersand(&) means take the address(index) of j, not the value and assign it to i;
cout << *i; //Prints the value that is found at whatever address i is pointing to which in this case is 5 since its location is the same as j's

I can answer more questions in the morning as I'm going to bed. So I bid thee all good night.

------------------
Sam Washburn

[This message has been edited by samw3 (edited January 23, 2007).]

ok i think i know what my problem is. i just don't know when/why you would use it so that's keeping me from understanding it.

i think im going to bed now too. see you guys after work.

------------------
~~~boogie woogie woogie~~~

quote:

---

Originally posted by bwoogie:
Steveth, thanks alot for that. now, one more question. it doesnt seem to accept spaces. the program just quits.

---

First of all, use getline for any input that has spaces in it.

Make sure you put a cin.ignore() after every cin>> command. If you don't, a following getline command will not wait for input, but deliver an empty string.

------------------
+---------+
|steveth45|
+---------+

[This message has been edited by steveth45 (edited January 24, 2007).]

// Non reference version
void doSomething(int i){
++i;
}
int x = 5;
doSomething(x)

Upon executing the doSomething function above, it copies x into i and then performs the function. When the function is finished x still equals 5.

// Reference Version
void doSomething(int *i){
*i++;
}
int x = 5;
doSomething(&x)

Upon executing this function however, i is defined as a pointer to an int, not as an int. So, &x passes the memory address of x into the function and assigns it to the i pointer.

Inside the function, the value located at i's address is incremented. So, when the function returns x equals 6 since i pointed to x's address.

There are two reasons why to do this that I can think of.

1. if you are passing a massive struct as a parameter, skipping that copy to local variable is obviously faster.

2. If you need to "return" more than one value from the function you can pass parameters that you want modified by reference. For example:

int doSomething(int x, int y) // this can only return one int. i.e. return 5;

void doSomething(int *x, int *y, int *z) // this can "return" three values by modifying x, y, and z's values in the function, though you really don't use the return keyword to do it.

That's just one example of using pointers. Another is the very flexible collection structure "link list".

Some people think pointers are evil. Since they reference memory locations directly, you can accidentally write to improper areas of memory and wreak havoc. This is how buffer overrun security exploits occur.

So, have fun with pointers, but just don't run with scissors.

------------------
Sam Washburn

------------------
MM out-
Thought travels much faster than sound, it is better to think something twice, and say it once, than to think something once, and have to say it twice.
"Frogs and Fauns! The tournament!" - Professor Winneynoodle/HanClinto

and the largest amount of int arrays you can have as far as i know is 2gb
so if your ram is larger than that you are out of luck and even if you wanted to unless you use a 64bit system the largest amounts of objects that an array can have is 2gb(in integer terms something like 2 or 1 billion).

and you rarely see a program that doesn't use a pointer so,make sure you really understand them before you move on to classes and dynamic memory allocation.

btw, hackers can use pointers in stack cracking,which has been a great source of trouble in the security community.

and something you should know,c++ pointers and memory allocation stuff is something you should really master, even the pro's mess up with that,for example the great american black-out of 2003,that caused black outs through many states and toronto and some canadian cities,was caused by a faulty c++ memory leak, and the mars rover was lost in mars for a couple of weeks because of memory allocation problems.

------------------
Matthew(22:36-40)"Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."
Whose Son Is the Christ

quote:

---

Originally posted by spade89:
hey, i am a big fan of char arrays i just don't see why one would need to make a simple concept such as a string into a class ,it add a huge amount of incompatibility to previously written codes(specially c codes).

---

Because a class makes things even easier. And as you get familiar with both, you will begin to see the complexities, problems, and difficulties in maintaining and using char arrays.

Understanding and becoming familiar with collection classes will make coding in any object oriented language much easier. The classes take care of management and length issues making you, the developer, more productive.

char arrays are not very dynamic and are much more prone to memory issues. I don't know if you have ever run into really strange crashes before. Crashing at random locations each time you run. Sometimes crashing, sometimes not. Crash only happens in Release version. I have found the NUMBER ONE reason for these random crashes is due to array bounding issues. And, more specifically, it is code using char arrays and going beyond the array boundary.

These issues are extremely tough to track down. It is often due to using strcpy and copying a larger string into a small string. Sure, you can use strncpy to protect this, but then you have the added overhead of being sure to add the NULL terminator yourself. What if you forget? Why even have that extra step? And it's just not very clean.

Concatening a 'string' is much easier than concatenating char arrays. What if you concatenate beyond the size? How about reallocating space for a char array?

char arrays will work and serve their purpose, but using an OO class is much easier and simpler to use for the developer.

------------------
MM out-
Thought travels much faster than sound, it is better to think something twice, and say it once, than to think something once, and have to say it twice.
"Frogs and Fauns! The tournament!" - Professor Winneynoodle/HanClinto

------------------
Sam Washburn

so basically pointers are so you can play with the same data without actually copying the data to another variable?

they point to the address where the data is stored so you can edit the data in another function where the original variable doesn't exist.

------------------
~~~boogie woogie woogie~~~

quote:

---

Originally posted by samw3:

// Reference Version
void doSomething(int *i){
*i++;
}
int x = 5;
doSomething(&x)

---

void doSomething(int &i){
i++;
}
int x = 5;
doSomething(x)

References work similar to pointers, but instead of having to dereference the pointer, the reference just acts like a normal variable and can be incremented by calling "i++". Also, notice that you pass in the variable directly, without having to extract the address: "doSomething(x)".

References are similar to pointers, but the syntax is easier, and it is more efficient because it doesn't have to waste time dereferencing a pointer. Also, they are safer because you can't use them accidentally to address the wrong memory location.

------------------
+---------+
|steveth45|
+---------+

or try playing around with pointers a bit.

and don't forget "Practice makes perfect.".plus practice lets your brain adjust to the new grammer of the language.

------------------
Matthew(22:36-40)"Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."
Whose Son Is the Christ

I also think its wise to really get your head around dereferencing pointers especially since you will probably have to deal with handles (pointers to pointers int **i) sometime in the future.

But still, thanks for the correction.

------------------
Sam Washburn

quote:

---

Originally posted by spade89:
hey for those of you learning c++,my advice to you before you move on to oop,templates or other stuff is that you first get aquainted with how things work in c++,like make a calculator that accepts input in the form of 1+2*3
and displays the output,or make a program to ilusstrate fibonacci number.

---

Ok good idea. I'm working on a calculator right now.

------------------
~~~boogie woogie woogie~~~

Plus you don't have intellisence or the like (evil Visual Assist) to help complete your words or show the data structure, which over times makes you think more about your program (such as data structures, variable names, function names and parameters, etc.).

Final major bonus, you will over time be able to code pretty much anywhere! As long as you have some paper and a pen you'll be set (which you should definately get!!). You need a small pad (quarter of an A4, so I think an A6...), and a nice big A4 notebook the A4 200 page notebooks are the ones I like to get. I used to work on projects while I was catching the train to Uni. I had just over an hour trip and I was able to get a lot of work done

------------------
www.auran.com

------------------
~~~boogie woogie woogie~~~

quote:

---

Originally posted by dartsman:
One thing I would recommend, is to actually write out code in a notebook.

---

Yeah, it's a great way to program without a computer around. No, seriously, sketching your ideas ahead of time, planning data structures and interrelationships is very helpful to do on paper before you fire up the IDE. I have a notepad and some graph paper at my desk at work, and my ideas usually take some form on paper before I hit the keyboard.

Intellisense is great, so what if you don't remember if the variable is named numThis or numThat, you hit the period and type "nu" and hit enter. This is called productivity. Maybe you think variable declarations are numbing our programmer minds and we should deal strictly with memory locations in hex and write all our code in ASM. ASM, however, is a layer of abstraction between you and the cpu, why not code directly in hex by memorizing the hex values for all the important cpu instructions? Maybe keyboards and text editors are making us soft, and we should create programs manually with punch cards.

------------------
+---------+
|steveth45|
+---------+

I take notes and ui sketches, etc. as well. I like index cards with a binder clip because I am a random thinker and I can shuffle them around into a more coherent sense later.

------------------
Sam Washburn

anyways i just thought that i should show those of you learning c++ a cool algorithm,very simple and mostly useless,the following code gets a character from cin and displays the ascii and binary value of the code.

#include<iostream.h> int main(){ char c; int i; cout<<"enter any character:\n"; cin>>c; for(int j=0;j<32;j++){ cout<<c%2; c=c/2; } return 0; }

------------------
Matthew(22:36-40)"Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."
Whose Son Is the Christ

[This message has been edited by spade89 (edited January 30, 2007).]

------------------
~~~boogie woogie woogie~~~

------------------
~~~boogie woogie woogie~~~

------------------
Sam Washburn

ok to do the blah-plus-blah-times-blah-minus-blah-divided-blah-etc. i have to get the string from the user. lets call it exp (short for expression)

string exp; cout<<"Enter the expression "; cin>>exp; cin.ignore();

alright, we wont know how many operators we will receive so we have to figure that out first. I thinking, maybe use an array. Split the string up and place them in the array, then count how many items we have in the array, do a loop and solve the math problem.

...and that is where i'd be stuck.....

------------------
~~~boogie woogie woogie~~~

The multi-operator version will require recursion or a stack.. higher level stuff. (That is if you want to keep the mathematical order of operations intact.)

------------------
Sam Washburn

#include <iostream> #include <string> using namespace std; int num1() { int n1; cout<<"Enter First Number "; cin>>n1; return n1; } int num2() { int n2; cout<<"Enter Second Number "; cin>>n2; return n2; } void showAnswer(int ans) { cout<<"The Answer Is: " << ans << "\n\n"; } void showMenu() { int opt; cout<<"------------\n"; cout<<"Menu:\n"; cout<<"1. Addition\n"; cout<<"2. Subtraction\n"; cout<<"3. Multipulcation\n"; cout<<"4. Division\n"; cout<<"5. Enter Expression\n"; cout<<"0. Quit\n"; cout<<"Choose an item from the menu and press enter "; cin>>opt; cin.ignore(); int number1; int number2; if (opt != 5 && opt != 0) { number1 = num1(); number2 = num2(); if (opt == 1) { showAnswer(number1 + number2); } if (opt == 2) { showAnswer(number1 - number2); } if (opt == 3) { showAnswer(number1 * number2); } if (opt == 4) { showAnswer(number1 / number2); } showMenu(); } else if (opt == 0) { } else if (opt == 5) { string exp; cout<<"Enter an expression and hit enter "; cin>>exp; cin.ignore; } else { cout<<"Please choose an item from the list.\n"; showMenu(); } } int main() { cout<<"bwoogie's calculator\n"; showMenu(); }

------------------
~~~boogie woogie woogie~~~

------------------
Sam Washburn

i wish i would have started with c++. then by now i'd know how to program with it better (i would think) and i could work on my game haha. wow i want to make my game. oh well, i will keep practicing. what should i write now?

------------------
~~~boogie woogie woogie~~~

Good work! To get the number of characters in a string use the size() function. In your case it would be exp.size() and to get the characters do something like the following.

for(int i =0; i < exp.size(); i++) { char blob = exp[i]; // do something with the character here }

Do a google search on parsing and you will probably come up with some examples on how to split apart the string. It's a lot trickier than you might think.

[This message has been edited by HeardTheWord (edited January 27, 2007).]

Anyways, learning c++ is fun, but a pain at the same time. weird. but yeah. please give me suggestions on what to write next.

------------------
~~~boogie woogie woogie~~~

------------------
Matthew(22:36-40)"Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."
Whose Son Is the Christ

------------------
Sam Washburn

quote:

---

Originally posted by samw3:
How about a "guess my number" game?

---

ok sounds like a good idea. i will start on that today.

------------------
~~~boogie woogie woogie~~~

------------------
Matthew(22:36-40)"Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."
Whose Son Is the Christ

quote:

---

Originally posted by spade89:
what's a "guess my number" game?????

---

The computer pick a number from 1 to 100 and prompts "Guess my number?". And the user types number to guess it. With each guess the computer responds "Higher", "Lower", or "You Guess It!" depending on the guess.

------------------
Sam Washburn

p.s. i used a pointer!

#include <iostream> using namespace std; void check(int answer); void guess(); int *pointer; int main() { int randint; randint = (rand()%100) + 1; pointer = &randint; cout<<"I'm thinking of a number between 1 and 100\n"; guess(); } void guess() { cout<<"What is your guess? "; int myguess; cin>>myguess; cin.ignore(); check(myguess); } void check(int answer) { if (answer > *pointer) { cout<<"Your guess was too high. Try again\n"; guess(); } else if (answer < *pointer) { cout<<"Your guess was too low. Try again\n"; guess(); } else if (answer = *pointer) { cout<<"YOU WIN!"; main(); } }

------------------
~~~boogie woogie woogie~~~

Most people seed the generator by the internal timers like so:

srand((unsigned int)time(0));

EDIT: You have another nasty bug: a recursion stack overflow possibility.
Since you keep calling the main function when they win, but technically you are still in the main function's scope, if they keep playing and playing at some point you will run out of stack. It might be like 100000 games to hit it tho.. depends on your platform, but its still good to know its there.

But its a really interesting way to build the game without any loops.

------------------
Sam Washburn

[This message has been edited by samw3 (edited January 30, 2007).]

------------------
~~~boogie woogie woogie~~~

1. Take a 20 element array
2. Fill it with 20 random numbers from 1 to 100
3. Print the numbers on the screen
4. Sort them from lowest to highest.
5. Print them again sorted.

then, of course, show your code
------------------
Sam Washburn

[This message has been edited by samw3 (edited January 30, 2007).]

so, here she is! it look some research. i got it figured out.

#include <iostream> #include <cstdlib> //used for srand #include <ctime> //getting the time to make random numbers #include <algorithm> //sorting using namespace std; int main() { //create the array of random numbers cout<<"Unordered Random Numbers\n"; int arr[20]; //Great discovery! srand MUST NOT be in the loop! srand((unsigned)time(NULL)); for (int x = 0; x<20; x++) { arr[x] = (rand()%100)+1; //print out the number just created cout<< arr[x] <<" "; } //Sort the numbers sort(arr,arr+20); //and print them out cout<<"\n----\nSorted Numbers\n"; for (int z = 0; z<20; z++) { cout<< arr[z] <<" "; } cin.get(); cin.ignore(); }

------------------
~~~boogie woogie woogie~~~

i think www.cprogramming.com has some good tutorials , and if you are interested try googling for the tower of hanoi problem, or the fibonacci numbers(if you are interested in recursion). i never used it much but comb sort is supposedly real good with large amount of items.

------------------
Matthew(22:36-40)"Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."
Whose Son Is the Christ

Another site which contains great tutorials is www.aihorizon.com it mostly covers AI, but has some useful information about linked lists, ext.
------------------
MM out-
Thought travels much faster than sound, it is better to think something twice, and say it once, than to think something once, and have to say it twice.
"Frogs and Fauns! The tournament!" - Professor Winneynoodle/HanClinto

[This message has been edited by Mene-Mene (edited January 31, 2007).]

------------------
MM out-
Thought travels much faster than sound, it is better to think something twice, and say it once, than to think something once, and have to say it twice.
"Frogs and Fauns! The tournament!" - Professor Winneynoodle/HanClinto

think of a list as a conga line; each person in the line is holding onto the next person's shoulders. that's essentially a single-linked list.

one link in the list (a link is one item in the list) could look like this:

// pseudo-code
class link{
int itemToStore;
link* nextLink;
}

each link in the list holds a pointer/reference to the next link. so if you're iterating through a list:
// definition
link currentLink;
// move to the next link
currentLink = currentLink->nextLink;

thats essentially what a linked list is. the plus's but a linked list is that it's easy/fast to add new links. you just find the last link and make its reference point to a new link.

the downside is that it takes a long time to iterate through. well, longer then say an array or vector.

questions?

------------------
MM out-
Thought travels much faster than sound, it is better to think something twice, and say it once, than to think something once, and have to say it twice.
"Frogs and Fauns! The tournament!" - Professor Winneynoodle/HanClinto

Forgot Question 2. Oh Well, I'll try and see how to work it. I understand it, just not how to put it together. Like I understand that an engine uses cylinder's ext. for power (Not going through and explanation right now), but I don't know how to put one together.

------------------
MM out-
Thought travels much faster than sound, it is better to think something twice, and say it once, than to think something once, and have to say it twice.
"Frogs and Fauns! The tournament!" - Professor Winneynoodle/HanClinto

quote:

---

Originally posted by spade89:
i have to say you are more creative than most begining c++ coders ,it must be because of your previous coding experience. and if you want to learn more about sorts try building your own like bubble sort or quick sort , instead of using the standard libraries.

i think www.cprogramming.com has some good tutorials , and if you are interested try googling for the tower of hanoi problem, or the fibonacci numbers(if you are interested in recursion). i never used it much but comb sort is supposedly real good with large amount of items.

---

erhm, not really interested in learning much more about sort. i know it can come in handy.. but i dont see that it is extremely important right now.. is it?

------------------
~~~boogie woogie woogie~~~

as for command line arguments let me give you an example:

int main(int argc,char **argv){ if(argc>1){ cout<<argv[1]; } else{ cout<<"please enter an argument through a command line \n"; } }

myprogram.exe mene-mene

when you type the above thing it brings up a program that displays mene-mene .

argc is the number of arguments passed so if the program was to display]
cout<<argv[1]<<' ';
cout<<argv[2]<<' ';
cout<<argv[3]<<endl;
and you runned the program like:
myprogram.exe mene-mene likes c++

this program will display:
mene-mene likes c++

let me give you an example of how windows uses this to copy a file if you just open the command prompt and let's say you have a file called file.jpg

and you type copy file.jpg c:\

this will copy file.jpg to c:\
so copy would be the program and file.jpg and c:\ would be the two argumetns, so in the program copy it is using the array argv as a normal array(this can be an alternative to using cin,cout for simple tasks ).

there is something also called the environment pointer.
which we use like:
void main(int argc,char **argv,char ** env){}

but that is another story ,try googling for it or something.

or better yet let me give you an example program and try to figure it out by yourself

#include<conio.h> int main(int argc,char **argv,char ** env){ for(int i=0;i<64;i++){ cout<<"environment variable "<<i<<"= "<<env[i]<<endl; } getch(); return 0; }

try pressing control+break when system properties comes up click on the advanced tab and press the environment variables button and see if the stuff in there resembles what this program displayed.
¢¼

------------------
Matthew(22:36-40)"Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."
Whose Son Is the Christ

yeah it is important if you are thinking of being a professional c++ programer you would be able to build your own algorithms based on the sort algorithms and you might really need them in some of your programs.

even if you think you won't you don't want to have to learn this later when you have known everyting else, you are better off learning it now.

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Matthew(22:36-40)"Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."
Whose Son Is the Christ

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~~~boogie woogie woogie~~~

Learning and understanding different sorting algorithms will also help you understand why certain search algorithms are faster than others, as well as when and why to use certain containers. It goes beyond sorting.

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Sam Washburn

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~~~boogie woogie woogie~~~

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Matthew(22:36-40)"Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."
Whose Son Is the Christ

quote:

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Originally posted by SSquared:
In fact, if I remember correctly, sorting and trees were a first year topic in college.

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Then you find out that all the sorting routines are already built into most code libraries like STL and .NET, and that you'll probably never have to implement a tree.

Just kidding. I had to write a sort algorithm just the other day--the library ones don't always fit the task at hand. You'll want to know trees, too, in case it comes up in an interview or programming test for a job. I wouldn't stress out too much about having to implement them for production code. Hash tables are much faster and simpler than trees for most purposes. If you implement a hash table properly, the search time is O(1). Doing a search of an balanced tree is roughly O(log n). In layman's terms, trees take longer to search as they grow, hash tables do not.

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|steveth45|
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In fact, it was just yesterday I was telling someone at work about that very thread.

So...it does come up in my own conversations every so often as well.

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~~~boogie woogie woogie~~~

and thats kinda surprising about C# being faster then C++. STL has been around longer then C# and C# is an interpreted language so its a little odd. anyone have a link to that thread? or perhaps the abliity to sum it up?

quote:

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Originally posted by jestermax:
and thats kinda surprising about C# being faster then C++. STL has been around longer then C# and C# is an interpreted language so its a little odd. anyone have a link to that thread? or perhaps the abliity to sum it up?

---

Actually, C# gets compiled "just-in-time", which means that when you load an application, there is a slight delay as the byte code is compiled into machine code, then it runs at full speed. I don't know about C# being faster than C++ in general, but it does handle strings more efficiently (faster) than STL strings with C++. Don't get me wrong, I love the STL, and I think its capabilities go well beyond .NET as far as fast, generic data handling. .NET is really oriented toward writing GUI applications, and STL is better suited for games. I don't think C# will ever compare with C++ for dealing with large chunks of data and rapid I/O regarding sound and video hardware. If you see a fast game written in C#, it was probably written in C# on the surface, but is really just making calls into a C++ based game engine.

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|steveth45|
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quote:

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Originally posted by jestermax:
so.... remind me why C# needs to be compiled just in time? with Java, it runs on any operating system with a JRE but what's the reasoning for .NET?...

---

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|steveth45|
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In the end, you have a pre-compiled .NET app. With one caveat. I do believe it will only run on the specific machine. You can't copy and run it on someone else's computer.

void bubblesort(int x[], int a) { for (int pass = 1; pass < a; pass++) { for (int i = 0; i < a-pass; i++) { if (x[i] > x[i+1]) { int temp = x[i]; x[i]=x[i+1]; x[i+1]=temp; } } } }

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~~~boogie woogie woogie~~~

#include <iostream> using namespace std; class coolness { public: coolness(); ~coolness(); void setcool(int i); int getcool(); protected: int coolrating; }; coolness::coolness() { coolrating=0; } coolness::~coolness() { } void coolness::setcool(int i) { coolrating=i; } int coolness::getcool() { return coolrating; } int main() { coolness cool; cool.setcool(1000); cout<< "your coolness rating is " << cool.getcool(); cin.get(); cin.ignore(); }

--Edit:

whoa, structures are awesome! those would come in extremely handy for keeping track of stats in a game! i love C++!!!!

[This message has been edited by bwoogie (edited February 03, 2007).]

[This message has been edited by bwoogie (edited February 03, 2007).]

coolness::coolness() : coolrating(0) { }

but bottom line, they do the same thing so good job

oh yeah, classes aren't structures. they're similar in many ways but different enough to be considered different

quote:

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Originally posted by jestermax:
oh yeah, classes aren't structures. they're similar in many ways but different enough to be considered different

---

In C++, the only difference is that the members of a struct are public by default and the members of a class are private by default. Since the public and protected members of the above "coolness" class are explicitly defined, you could replace the class declaration with struct, and it would work exactly the same.

Using struct in C++ is usually just a signal to those reading the code that you are making some plain old data structure and not necessarily a complex object. This is because of the history of struct in C, but there is no practical reason in C++ that you can't use them interchangeably for both purposes.

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|steveth45|
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~~~boogie woogie woogie~~~

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MM out-
Thought travels much faster than sound, it is better to think something twice, and say it once, than to think something once, and have to say it twice.
"Frogs and Fauns! The tournament!" - Professor Winneynoodle/HanClinto

if you think you know pointers pretty well by now, try using pointer to objects.
like :

coolness *cool; cool->setcool(1000); cout<< "your coolness rating is " << cool->getcool();

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Matthew(22:36-40)"Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."
Whose Son Is the Christ

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MM out-
Thought travels much faster than sound, it is better to think something twice, and say it once, than to think something once, and have to say it twice.
"Frogs and Fauns! The tournament!" - Professor Winneynoodle/HanClinto

struct x{ int i; char x[32]; }

these variables inside x are all public i.e. anyone can acces them using an object of x like
x obj;
obj.i=9;

but in a class if you do the same thing:

class x{ int i; char s[32]; }

in this case you can't say:
x obj;
obj.i=9;
that will make an error because s and i are both private,so you have to un-private them by using public keyword like:

class x{ public: int i; char s[32]; }

btw, have you learned about a union variable?
and you should also practice with the stl and try finding(and using) fuctions in the headers that come with your compiler.

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Matthew(22:36-40)"Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."
Whose Son Is the Christ

union my_string
{
char * text;
unsigned int unique_id;
}

On a 32 bit system, a pointer is 32 bits, and an unsigned int is also 32 bits, so an instance of this union will only be 32 bits.

my_string str1;
my_string str2;
str1.text = new char[10];
str2.text = new char[10];

Now, the values of str1.unique_id and str2.unique_id are basically the memory locations of the char array that they point to, since these strings were initialized separately, the unique_id is, of course, always going to be different. It can be super dangerous of course, don't do this:

str1.unique_id = 1234; // do you know what's at that memory location?
cout << str1.text; //who knows what this will print? maybe it'll crash.
str1.text[3] = 'M'; // You could be trashing the stack, or worse. Hopefully the program will crash and nothing worse.

You can safely code in C++ without using unions.

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|steveth45|
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quote:

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This is called productivity. Maybe you think variable declarations are numbing our programmer minds and we should deal strictly with memory locations in hex and write all our code in ASM. ASM, however, is a layer of abstraction between you and the cpu, why not code directly in hex by memorizing the hex values for all the important cpu instructions? Maybe keyboards and text editors are making us soft, and we should create programs manually with punch cards.

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If that was directed at me your so far off it's just stupid. I don't know if you were trying to be funny either, but it wasn't... BTW, I wasn't bagging Intellisence... I use it all the time (and definitely at work) and I know it's awesome.

Just for a beginner (and when someone is just learning), it isn't much of a concern to use it or not, as your only working on say 1-10 code/header files and at most about 1-2k lines of code. You *should* be able to juggle the classes/structures/functions/etc. in your head or on paper for the duration of the project. However, on larger projects (professional or hobby) you definitely need it. Also it's just some advice which I've found helped me... and it seems others have used it too...

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www.auran.com

quote:

---

Originally posted by dartsman:
steveth:
If that was directed at me your so far off it's just stupid. I don't know if you were trying to be funny either, but it wasn't...

---

I was just joking around, as were you. You called Visual Assist "evil," right? That was a joke, and so was what I wrote. What if the people who wrote Visual Assist read your message and got offended and thought what you said was "stupid" and not funny? If you write a humorous overstatement, and somebody responds in kind, you can't take offense.

As for my comment, I thought it was funny when i wrote it, but you're probably right, its stupid. What's even stupider and certainly not funny is a translation of what I wrote into Ebonics:

quote:

---

Originally posted by steveth, translated into Ebonics:

Intellisense iz great, so what if ya don' remember if da variable iz named numThis or numThat, ya hit da period an' type "nu" an' hit enter. This iz called productivity. Maybe ya th'o't variable declarations iz numbing our programmer minds an' we's should deal strictly wiff memory locations in hex an' write all our code in ASM. ASM, however, iz uh layer o' abstraction between ya an' da cpu, why not code directly in hex by memorizing da hex values fo' all da important cpu instructions? Maybe keyboards an' text editors iz making us soft, an' we's should create programs manually wiff punch cards.

---

Now everybody is offended .

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|steveth45|
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www.auran.com

I have to say i'm siding with dartsman on this; beginner programmers should stick to a notepad style editor for writing code. its the next best thing to a pad of paper and makes it so you're more than just a script kiddie. No, i am not bashing visual assist/intellisense either.

When i first started coding Java, my instructors got me to do it in notepad. It as annoying as anything but when i moved on to an IDE i actually knew what was going on and what the tools were doing for me.

quote:

---

Originally posted by jestermax:
When i first started coding Java, my instructors got me to do it in notepad. It as annoying as anything but when i moved on to an IDE i actually knew what was going on and what the tools were doing for me.

---

I took a class on Java in 1997, and we used Java 1.0 with CodeWarrior on Macs... it was not a pretty sight. It was the first term that they used Java at the university and most of the professor's example programs didn't even compile. This was before Java had the JIT compiler, so it was just, plain slow. My project for that class was a web-applet game... my first game, technically.

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|steveth45|
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I can personally vouch that, no matter what the language, any IDE assistance is a performance booster.

I think telling programmers they have to write code in notepad is akin to telling technical writers they have to use notepad as well.. no spell check, auto page numbering, table formatting, etc.

Now, I can understand that budding coders who use the GUIs that add classes and methods and even refactor push downs and pull ups; how they may never know how to read the code because they never see it.

BUT, tools like dynamic syntax checking, bracket/brace completion/tracking and object/method drill-downs are essential to code fast (at least they are for me). Even M$'s dynamic help system, which was snubbed to begin with, is faster than looking it up in a manual or googling it. Sure some people can pull every function out of their head. These are probably the ones that only know one language, and will be out the door when their language of choice goes the inevitable way-of-the-dodo.

I think the most important thing for new coders to learn is algorithm design, and not just for one language. Can you do a red-black tree in all the langs you know? Do you know when to use one?

That's the stuff even the most brilliant IDE will not be able to help you with. I say let the IDE do all the boring drudge work of syntax proofreading and moving stuff around. Syntax is just a intermediate language between your brain and the compiler.

With my experience, if I was going to hire a coder I would look for:
1) Their grasp of algorithms and design patterns
2) How well they can *read* code (regardless of language)
3) How well they can design a solution to a problem. Even if its only in UML.

I would avoid a coder who:
1) Claims to be a specialist in only one or two languages
2) Can produce but cannot read code
3) Rewrites code instead of refactoring it

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Sam Washburn

[This message has been edited by samw3 (edited February 06, 2007).]

quote:

---

Originally posted by samw3:
I think telling programmers they have to write code in notepad is akin to telling technical writers they have to use notepad as well.. no spell check, auto page numbering, table formatting, etc.

... tools like dynamic syntax checking, bracket/brace completion/tracking and object/method drill-downs are essential to code fast (at least they are for me).

---

I agree 100%. Memorizing the details of the syntax is not programming, its just learning a syntax. If the IDE automatically indents for me, or reminds me if I need () or [] or <>, that's fine. I know the algorithm, so who cares about the syntax of the ugliest and most powerful language of all time (C++).

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|steveth45|
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> That's the stuff even the most brilliant IDE will not be able to help you with.

Actually, Visual Studio does have code snippets, so if someone were to write the snippet, the IDE will have immediate access to adding it to your code. Please note, there IS a hint of sarcasm in what I am saying.

Memorizing syntax is hard. Especially when you are dealing with several different languages. When I am interviewing someone, I look beyond the syntax and am much more concerned with their understanding of the problem and their thought process. When I am nervous, like in an interview, I know the feeling of forgetting little syntax things.

Any tool to make a developer's job more productive is a plus...balanced with the developer still understanding the task/job/code. In other words, like Sam stated, I am not a big fan of Wizards spitting out a bunch of code the developer never needs to understand. I've seen this and the result is the person does not understand event models which is key to really understanding user interfaces.

Now, with all that said, I do believe when I started programming, I just penciled out the code. I stepped through everything by hand until I felt it was ready. Then I would type it all in. This was a terrific way to learn what I was trying to accomplish, but there also were no great editing tools at the time (I used 'vi').

I never was saying you should only code in notepad, or just use notepads, or that IDE assistance is evil. Just that the dependencies to which you become reliant on with the particular IDE or 3rd party tool.

It was just some advice...

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www.auran.com

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Matthew(22:36-40)"Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."
Whose Son Is the Christ

This is not to say that they should always stick to that; this is saying that until they get a decent grasp as how to write proper code and what actually happens with the compilation process. that's all. it's not a hazing thing or some form of initiation. this was advice given in hopes that whoever takes it will be a better programmer later on.

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~~~boogie woogie woogie~~~

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Matthew(22:36-40)"Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."
Whose Son Is the Christ

On the other hand, it may not be all that useful to actually destroy an object instead of simply setting an "isalive switch." If I simply use a switch mechanism, then I can retain state data until program exit. However, all of that data will remain in memory, which could cause problems if the data is large enough. Basically, I'm messing around with general RPG ideas while getting a handle on C++, and I can't figure out which technique would work better with holding data for the various characters.

Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated. I'm trying to figure out best practices for game development.

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If games please me, and if it's possible to please God with games, why on earth wouldn't I make games?

If you write: MyClass myClass;
then MyClass will be deleted when leaving scope. The destructor will be called automatically. You do not want to explicitly call delete in this case.

If you write: MyClass* myClass = new MyClass();
then you must explicity call delete from within the same scope you allocated the data. In this scenario, you are creating the memory and are responsible for cleaning it up. This is where memory leaks come into play. If you don't delete it, you get memory leaks. So memory allocation and deletion come in pairs. Sometimes people forget the delete.

There is something called a Smart Pointer some programmers use which automatically knows when to delete your allocated memory. I haven't used them in years, so I can't remember the exact syntax. A Google search should turn up good information.

Languages like C# and Java have automatic memory management and will free the memory with something called garbage collection.

My next question is, though it seems it's come up already in this thread, if I want to have spaces in my strings, should I be using the string type/class? I've always done things with character arrays, but I wonder if I'm better off using strings. Are there any real disadvantages to using strings over character arrays?

Thanks!

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If games please me, and if it's possible to please God with games, why on earth wouldn't I make games?

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If games please me, and if it's possible to please God with games, why on earth wouldn't I make games?

I'm having a lot of trouble with my switch statements in my map generator right now. So long as I only have two cases (or a case and a default), everything works fine. Unfortunately, that doesn't help me much. I've tried using if/else if to make sure that there wasn't just some syntactical error in my switch, but the problem persisted. The problem, to clarify, is that my app crashes on load when I have two or more cases in this one switch. I'm using similar switch/cases elsewhere, and I've had no problems with them.

Here's my code (HTML is disabled on my account, I think, so I can't do pre-formated text; in other words, indentation won't be right):

EDIT: I found out about "code" as a BBCode tag. I've fixed this post.

int createArena(int startx, int starty, int onwall) { int countx = 0, county = 0; switch(onwall) { case 0: // The North wall of this room attaches to the above room. // Check the area for space for a box room. startx = startx - generateNumber(2,3); for( county = starty ; county <= (starty + 8) ; ++county ) { for( countx = (startx - 1) ; countx <= (startx + 8) ; ++countx ) { if(layout[county][countx] != 2) { // If there is insufficient space, return 1. return 1; } } } // Otherwise, create the room. // Prior to beginning the loop, set the switch variable to 0. buildArena(startx, starty); return 0; break; case 1: // The East wall of this room attaches to the room to the right. // Check the area for space for a box room. startx = startx - 8; starty = starty - generateNumber(2,3); for( county = (starty - 1) ; county <= (starty + 8) ; ++county ) { for( countx = (startx - 1) ; countx <= (startx + 7) ; ++countx ) { if(layout[county][countx] != 2) { // If there is insufficient space, return 1. return 1; } } } // Otherwise, create the room. // Prior to beginning the loop, set the switch variable to 0. buildArena(startx, starty); return 0; break; case 2: // The North wall of this room attaches to the above room. // Check the area for space for a box room. for( county = (starty - 1) ; county <= (starty + 8) ; ++county ) { for( countx = (startx - 1) ; countx <= (startx + 8) ; ++countx ) { if(layout[county][countx] != 2) { // If there is insufficient space, return 1. return 1; } } } // Otherwise, create the room. // Prior to beginning the loop, set the switch variable to 0. buildArena(startx, starty); return 0; break; case 3: // The North wall of this room attaches to the above room. // Check the area for space for a box room. for( county = (starty - 1) ; county <= (starty + 8) ; ++county ) { for( countx = (startx - 1) ; countx <= (startx + 8) ; ++countx ) { if(layout[county][countx] != 2) { // If there is insufficient space, return 1. return 1; } } } // Otherwise, create the room. // Prior to beginning the loop, set the switch variable to 0. buildArena(startx, starty); return 0; break; default: // The room is the central room, and has no immediately joining room. // Thus, there is no need to check for space. buildArena(startx, starty); return 0; break; } }

By the way, buildArena takes two integers (which are correctly being passed), and is a void function. I'll probably change that to returning an int for added error detection, but I didn't find it immediately necessary since I'm already checking for the space needed for the buildArena function to succeed (there should be no possibility of failure).

Any help whatsoever would be much appreciated! Thanks!

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Portal with information on my programming projects and links to my other work

[This message has been edited by Xian_Lee (edited March 31, 2007).]

eg.

switch(val) { case 1: { // code... } break; case 2: { // code... } break; }

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Junior Programmer www.auran.com
Quality Assurance Lead www.rebelplanetcreations.com

[This message has been edited by dartsman (edited March 30, 2007).]

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Portal with information on my programming projects and links to my other work

You should check that county/countx are not < 0 or > then your max size...

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Junior Programmer www.auran.com
Quality Assurance Lead www.rebelplanetcreations.com

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Portal with information on my programming projects and links to my other work

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Junior Programmer www.auran.com
Quality Assurance Lead www.rebelplanetcreations.com

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Portal with information on my programming projects and links to my other work

Did the bounds checking fix your problem? A common error with for loops and an array is going one too far - e.g. if you have myArray[5] then you loop for (i = 0; i <= 5; i ++) but myArray only actually goes up to 4 cos it's 0 offset.

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http://www.geero.net/

If the bounds checking doesn't help, the 'buildArena(...)' most likely has a problem... please try and post code in the '[code]' blocks with the indentation :P

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Junior Programmer www.auran.com
Quality Assurance Lead www.rebelplanetcreations.com

In any case, I haven't gotten my code to work yet. I'm going to try to do it in the console instead of trying to build it and get SDL to display it.

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Portal with information on my programming projects and links to my other work

I copied the code over to another machine and built a simple driver for the map class I was working on. It was a simple console-based test for the class, and everything compiled and ran exactly as it should have.

I made no significant changes to the source code of the class, so I'm thinking that there's something else going wrong. Of course, it's going to be hard to figure out if something's going wrong in Code::Blocks, the way Code::Blocks tries to execute my code, or there's something odd going on with my SDL tie-ins. However, since that switch/case seems to be what the success or failure of the system depends on, I'm a bit at a loss in regards to finding the issue.

Regarding the possibility of getting out of the bounds of the array, I tested against it, but had no such luck in fixing the problem.

If anyone has some other insight to share, I would love to hear it!

The results of my mapping function actually look kind of good in the console system. The maps can be kind of nonsensical, but they function.

I'm running out of ideas as to why this isn't working.

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Portal with information on my programming projects and links to my other work

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Junior Programmer www.auran.com
Quality Assurance Lead www.rebelplanetcreations.com

This is going to drive me crazy.

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Portal with information on my programming projects and links to my other work

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Junior Programmer www.auran.com
Quality Assurance Lead www.rebelplanetcreations.com

int createArena(int startx, int starty, int onwall) { if( (startx < 1) || (startx > 78) ) { return 1; } else if( (starty < 1 || starty > 58) ) { return 1; } int countx = 0, county = 0; switch(onwall) { case 0: { // The North wall of this room attaches to the above room. // Check the area for space for a box room. //startx = startx - generateNumber(2,3); for( county = starty ; county <= (starty + 8) ; ++county ) { for( countx = (startx - 1) ; countx <= (startx + 8) ; ++countx ) { if(layout[county][countx] != 2) { // If there is insufficient space, return 1. return 1; } } } // Otherwise, create the room. // Prior to beginning the loop, set the switch variable to 0. buildArena(startx, starty); } break; case 1: { // The East wall of this room attaches to the room to the right. // Check the area for space for a box room. startx = startx - 8; starty = starty - generateNumber(2,3); if( (startx < 0) || (startx > 78) ); else if( (starty < 0 || starty > 58) ); for( county = (starty - 1) ; county <= (starty + 8) ; ++county ) { for( countx = (startx - 1) ; countx <= (startx + 7) ; ++countx ) { if(layout[county][countx] != 2) { // If there is insufficient space, return 1. return 1; } } } // Otherwise, create the room. // Prior to beginning the loop, set the switch variable to 0. buildArena(startx, starty); } break; case 2: { // The North wall of this room attaches to the above room. // Check the area for space for a box room. for( county = (starty - 1) ; county <= (starty + 8) ; ++county ) { for( countx = (startx - 1) ; countx <= (startx + 8) ; ++countx ) { if(layout[county][countx] != 2) { // If there is insufficient space, return 1. return 1; } } } // Otherwise, create the room. // Prior to beginning the loop, set the switch variable to 0. buildArena(startx, starty); } break; case 3: { // The North wall of this room attaches to the above room. // Check the area for space for a box room. for( county = (starty - 1) ; county <= (starty + 8) ; ++county ) { for( countx = (startx - 1) ; countx <= (startx + 8) ; ++countx ) { if(layout[county][countx] != 2) { // If there is insufficient space, return 1. return 1; } } } // Otherwise, create the room. // Prior to beginning the loop, set the switch variable to 0. buildArena(startx, starty); } break; default: { // The room is the central room, and has no immediately joining room. // Thus, there is no need to check for space. buildArena(startx, starty); } } return 0; }

I've tried to implement everything everything that has been suggested. As I've said, this compiled and executed as desired when I moved over to a command-line system. However, nothing changed in my graphics code (SDL) to have made a difference. There's something weird going on when I have this code in place. If I comment out all but two of the cases, then it runs again. Sometimes, technology perplexes me.

Thanks again for the help. You really don't have to worry about this, anyone. I was just hoping that there was some obvious error that could be pointed out.

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Portal with information on my programming projects and links to my other work

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Junior Programmer www.auran.com
Quality Assurance Lead www.rebelplanetcreations.com

Are those the answers to your questions?

I just can't understand why it works so long as there are not more than two cases. Much less why this switch has that issue when the switch used in the method before it (which this is nearly identical to) works just fine.

Oh, I forgot that my comments were all a mess in my code. Sorry about the confusion those comments may cause.

Thanks again for trying to help me with this. It's perplexing to say the least. It's so troublesome that I was inspired to create "The Programmer's Code." PyWeek 4 just began, so, for better or worse, I won't be able to get back to this project until PyWeek is finished.

Once more, thanks for any insight you may have. Thanks for continuing to try to help me.

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Portal with information on my programming projects and links to my other work

I think you havn't actually defended properly against the array being accessed out of the bounds...

all you do is:
if( (startx < 1) || (startx > 78) ) { return 1; }
else if( (starty < 1 || starty > 58) ) { return 1; }

but then you do:
for( county = starty ; county <= (starty + 8) ; ++county )

what stops starty being 58? then doing:
county = 58
county <= (starty + 8) // ie 58 + 8 = 66
then accessing element layout[66][x]? if x could be from 1 -> 78, your definitely accessing outside once you do layout[66][78]...

You should create a function called 'GetLayoutValue()' or the like which takes an X and a Y value, and then within that function do the check (make sure its within the bounds of the array), and if so return the value at that position, otherwise return -1 or some default 'error' value. That way you will be certain that it isn't crashing because of a possible out of bounds accessing...

Also if Code::Blocks has built in debugger, then set a break point at the start of your program (first line in main() would be good) and then just step through your program, line by line, checking the values of that line (such as hovering over the variables to follow whats happening in the code)...

Finally, you might want to just write your code down on paper (not all of it, just this function and some others if required), and then follow it with some test values. Try inserting some bad values which you know will crash, and then some safe values. Follow the flow of your program and the data being passed through...

Anywho, hope that helped...

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Junior Programmer www.auran.com
Quality Assurance Lead www.rebelplanetcreations.com

Your help is appreciated as always!

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Portal with information on my programming projects and links to my other work

------------------
Junior Programmer www.auran.com
Quality Assurance Lead www.rebelplanetcreations.com

Thanks again for all that help!

------------------
Portal with information on my programming projects and links to my other work