The Big Programming Thread - Page 302

On May 17 2013 12:04 CecilSunkure wrote:

If you're dealing with a text file try reading line by line, instead of with strcpy. Use fscanf. Looky here: http://www.randygaul.net/2013/02/07/fscanf-power/

On May 17 2013 11:53 Birdie wrote:
If I'm dealing with a text file where the last line is Baggins Bilbo;05-89378 with no space or newline character at the end of the file, how do I detect the "last character" which doesn't exist, so that I can cut that number off and place it into a variable?

I can do it with other lines using code such as

if(input[i] == '\n') {
			temp[j] = '\0';
			j = -1;
			printf("Temp number: %s\n", temp);
			strcpy(tempPhone.number, temp);
		}

but that doesn't work when there IS no newline at the end of the number.

This is in C by the way.

I've tried using input[i] == NULL, which didn't work either (I would have thought it would because it's trying to get a character which doesn't exist). Perhaps I don't understand NULL properly yet.

On May 17 2013 06:38 Bionicrm wrote:
I'm sort of new to web design. I've learned the basics of Python, HTML, CSS, and am still learning JavaScript (which is easy because concepts are similar to Python) via Codecademy.com.

I'm making a website, and when I zoom-in in the browser window, my little menu bar gets moved over and under the banner, a form is falling out of the border, and other crazy stuff. Are there ways that people prevent this?

When I zoom-in to TL, things just get bigger and fall off the screen, which is what should happen. Instead, things feel free to move all over on my site. Also, it is not visible on the web, as it's still in development (I view it from my computer), and I'm not sure if that has anything to do with it.

On May 17 2013 12:42 Mr. Wiggles wrote:
This might be a bit of a random question, but what's the best way to get yourself familiar with the source code of a piece of software you've never seen before?

Basically, I'm doing work with a prof at my school over the summer, and he has an existing program he wants me to get familiar with. The problem I'm having though, is that the code base is a whole lot bigger than anything I've had experience with before (50000+ lines of code that are relevant), and it's quite complicated/sophisticated. Right now, I've just been going through some of the more important parts of the code, but it's been more haphazard than I'd like, and I don't feel like I'm being very efficient with my time.

So, I was basically wondering if there were any strategies for getting familiar with new code you haven't seen before, and what the most efficient way to become familiar with a large program is. Does anyone have any advice?

This is pretty much the first time that I've had to work with a large amount of code that I hadn't written myself. Most things I've encountered in my coursework or during my free time have been a lot smaller and easier to understand, so I'm finding this a little daunting, haha.

Any help would be appreciated :p

On May 17 2013 12:14 Birdie wrote:
I tried the || input[i] == NULL already. However, Cecil helped me on Skype and I think I have it sorted. Basically, because fgets is reading the line into a string, the number will already be terminated by a \0, hence temp will already have the number stored inside it (due to how I was already placing characters into temp).

On May 17 2013 13:45 waxypants wrote:


Also FYI there is feof.
http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/cstdio/feof/

"If the end-of-file is encountered while attempting to read a character, the eof indicator is set (feof)."
http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/cstdio/fgets/

On May 17 2013 14:01 Birdie wrote:

Yup I tried using that too, didn't work but I'll try again tonight or tomorrow. It's still not working properly T_T it works fine if I add a newline at the end of the file, but if it terminates the file at the end of a line then it won't run my if statement so the number is never read into temp. Very annoying.

On May 17 2013 12:42 Mr. Wiggles wrote:
This might be a bit of a random question, but what's the best way to get yourself familiar with the source code of a piece of software you've never seen before?

Basically, I'm doing work with a prof at my school over the summer, and he has an existing program he wants me to get familiar with. The problem I'm having though, is that the code base is a whole lot bigger than anything I've had experience with before (50000+ lines of code that are relevant), and it's quite complicated/sophisticated. Right now, I've just been going through some of the more important parts of the code, but it's been more haphazard than I'd like, and I don't feel like I'm being very efficient with my time.

So, I was basically wondering if there were any strategies for getting familiar with new code you haven't seen before, and what the most efficient way to become familiar with a large program is. Does anyone have any advice?

This is pretty much the first time that I've had to work with a large amount of code that I hadn't written myself. Most things I've encountered in my coursework or during my free time have been a lot smaller and easier to understand, so I'm finding this a little daunting, haha.

Any help would be appreciated :p

On May 17 2013 12:42 Mr. Wiggles wrote:
This might be a bit of a random question, but what's the best way to get yourself familiar with the source code of a piece of software you've never seen before?

Basically, I'm doing work with a prof at my school over the summer, and he has an existing program he wants me to get familiar with. The problem I'm having though, is that the code base is a whole lot bigger than anything I've had experience with before (50000+ lines of code that are relevant), and it's quite complicated/sophisticated. Right now, I've just been going through some of the more important parts of the code, but it's been more haphazard than I'd like, and I don't feel like I'm being very efficient with my time.

So, I was basically wondering if there were any strategies for getting familiar with new code you haven't seen before, and what the most efficient way to become familiar with a large program is. Does anyone have any advice?

This is pretty much the first time that I've had to work with a large amount of code that I hadn't written myself. Most things I've encountered in my coursework or during my free time have been a lot smaller and easier to understand, so I'm finding this a little daunting, haha.

Any help would be appreciated :p

On May 17 2013 12:42 Mr. Wiggles wrote:
This might be a bit of a random question, but what's the best way to get yourself familiar with the source code of a piece of software you've never seen before?

Basically, I'm doing work with a prof at my school over the summer, and he has an existing program he wants me to get familiar with. The problem I'm having though, is that the code base is a whole lot bigger than anything I've had experience with before (50000+ lines of code that are relevant), and it's quite complicated/sophisticated. Right now, I've just been going through some of the more important parts of the code, but it's been more haphazard than I'd like, and I don't feel like I'm being very efficient with my time.

So, I was basically wondering if there were any strategies for getting familiar with new code you haven't seen before, and what the most efficient way to become familiar with a large program is. Does anyone have any advice?

This is pretty much the first time that I've had to work with a large amount of code that I hadn't written myself. Most things I've encountered in my coursework or during my free time have been a lot smaller and easier to understand, so I'm finding this a little daunting, haha.

Any help would be appreciated :p

On May 17 2013 14:01 Birdie wrote:

Yup I tried using that too, didn't work but I'll try again tonight or tomorrow. It's still not working properly T_T it works fine if I add a newline at the end of the file, but if it terminates the file at the end of a line then it won't run my if statement so the number is never read into temp. Very annoying.

On May 17 2013 17:39 Abductedonut wrote:


Hi Birdie - I've confirmed that it should place a NULL char into your string after you call fgets() once it reaches the end of file marker. That isn't your problem.

My guess would be this:

- The second parameter to your fgets call is wrong
- If you're placing the string on the heap via malloc(), you could be corrupting the heap later without realizing.
- If you're allocating it on the stack via an array, the pointer to the array may change once you re-enter the function.

Of course, this is all speculation without seeing your code but my guess is it's one of those. Here's what you should do:
Call printf("%s",input);

IMMEDIATELY after the call to fgets(). If it prints the string "Baggins Bilbo;05-89378" and the if ( input[i] == null ) does not work, you're corrupting the string somehow. If it prints gibberish after the "8", then the second parameter of fgets is wrong.

*edit* To make this clearer, you sound like you're kinda newish to programming, and this seems like it's a memory allocation or off-by-one error which will be a waste of time for you to hunt down. The bug is probably much more advanced then you think.

if(input[i] == '\n')

if(input[i] == '\n' || input[i] == '\0')

On May 17 2013 19:46 waxypants wrote:


Really it would be 1000x easier if OP gave a little more code instead of giving a tiny snippet saying it dint werk. Now that I look at it more closely, I can only guess what input, temp, i, and j really are. Its probably a super simple fix but I can't say exactly what it should be until I know more. Could be as simple as changing

if(input[i] == '\n')

to

if(input[i] == '\n' || input[i] == '\0')

.

On May 17 2013 20:12 teamamerica wrote:
You should look at what strlen returns to see why you're never seeing the \0 character in your code.

Hint: how does strlen know it's reached the end of the string?

On May 17 2013 20:23 mcc wrote:

Yep, that seems to be the suspicious part.

You should either use strlen value as termination flag along with '\n', or instead of using for-cycle use while and do not use strlen at all and test for '\n' and '\0' both.

On May 18 2013 03:06 enigmaticcam wrote:
Ok, I got a question for you game programmers. It's not so much a game programming question, but a game design question.

I work in the wine industry, and I work for a large wine manufacturer. Us developers in the IT department build business solutions to business problems. None of us really have any actual game development experience. But we have this idea to build and release a mobile wine simulation game. And games of course are a whole different ballpark than business applications.

Any recommendations on how to develop a game, not so much from a programming perspective, but a management perspective? Are there any written guides out there that might get us started?