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From: jec@nesac2.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: C Beginner
Message-ID: <1244@nesac2.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 13-Jun-87 21:39:12 EDT
Article-I.D.: nesac2.1244
Posted: Sat Jun 13 21:39:12 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 14-Jun-87 21:39:55 EDT
References: <7808@brl-adm.ARPA>
Organization: NESAC Lisle, Illinois
Lines: 52

I'm posting a reply, since the mailer barfed.
 
> And my last question is, does anyone have ideas for little'do nothing'
> programs that I can tackle as challenges to force me to learn the
> language?  I have a fairly large project in mind for the future, but
> trying it now would be extremely frustrating and a waste of time, I am
> sure.

A programming project for a (slightly more than) C beginner.

Given - a 250K file of Pascal functions, each of which is preceeded
by a one line comment of the form below.
{ FunctionName - description }
 ^                          ^ 
One space at each end of comment, comment starts at left margin, most
names start with an uppercase letter, and may be composed of almost any
combination of upper and lower case letters.  Other (internal) comments
may start at the left margin, but will begin with "{'" (single quote)
or "{  " (two spaces)

Requirement - create a program to take the source file name from the
command line, and do the following: Read the source file, recognizing
the { Name } construct, ignoring any comments that are of the form
{'anything'} or of the form {  anything } (two spaces after '{'),
and ignoring comments that do not start at the left margin.
Create a file of the same name as the function name, but limited to
eight characters, and with the extension of ".pas".  Recognize if
two functions have the same name, and change the second name to
avoid overwriting the previous name.  Stop after 'maximum directory
entries -1' files and prompt for the destination disk to be replaced
with another blank disk. If using disks with less than 360K space,
also check for amount of space used on the disk and prompt if another
disk is needed.  This check can be made without accessing the DOS
functions to read the file size from the directory.  

My version works on an MSDOS machine, write yours for your machine.
If you want a copy of my version (hardcopy) write me at the address
that news SHOULD include below.

This is a real task that I had to do this week, since the available
editor on the PC couldn't handle a 250K+ file.

Have fun

-- 

John Carter
AT&T Communications - Atlanta RWC
USnail:	3001 Cobb Parkway, Atlanta GA 30339
E-mail:	...ihnp4!cuea2!ltuxa!ll1!nesac2!jec
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(The above views are my very own. How dare you question them? :-)