When we think of the comma character we often think of it as a separator. It separates values in an CSV file, it separates items in lists, it may separate index values in multidimensional arrays (in other languages) and more. But in C++ an obscure way of using them was as an operator. The reason it never made it big as an operator and into the typical programming psyche is ...
Beginners to C++ programming find the concept of pointers foreign to them. Pointers, and code that manipulates pointers (aka pointer arithmetic), can even be daunting to some of the most seasoned programmers. Pointers in C++ account for a fair share of bugs in programs due to the lack of understanding. So why even use them? Well, besides being the most problematic, they are also some of the most powerful features ...
Remember those pesky equations that baffled you in like 1st grade? Addition and subtraction along with their friends multiplication and division. Hey, you wanted to go play kick ball or chase that girl around the playground... not to hook up with her but to put dirt in her hair. Well, you probably learned to write your equations in infix form like 3 + 4 or 2 * 7. This makes ...
I was bored and that can be a dangerous thing. Like doodling on the phone book while you are talking on the phone, I doodle code while answering questions on DIC. Yeah, it means I have no life and yes it means I was born a coder. During this little doodle I decided to make a slot machine. But not your standard slot machine per say, but one designed a ...
The Johnson-Trotter algorithm is an algorithm for figuring out permutations given a value set. A permutation is a way of altering the values in a set to create a different unique sequence from the original. If we have the set 1, 2, 3, 4, 5... one permutation would be 2, 1, 4, 5, 3 and another would be 3, 4, 2, 1, 5. Using a quirky little algorithm, we can ...
I got the idea for a file chunking program the other day while I was reading a Ruby article. I thought to myself, why not build a similar utility in C++? The idea of chunking a file (that is, taking a file and breaking it into smaller files) can be a useful utility when dealing with some rather big files. Perhaps if you mix it with some file compression before ...
