Forums | MacLife

Superpual · 2002-12-09 9:56 am

Could someone tell me how to do something in C++.
I need to write a function that determines what the longest word in a file is. The function should display the longest word and its length on the terminal screen.

I asked my Computer Science teacher and he said "Find out on the internet".

Fracai · 2002-12-09 10:26 am

well, you'll want to:
1. open the file
2. read in the next word
3. use strlen() to get the length of the string
4. if the length is the longest, store the word
5. repeat from 2 until you get to the end of the file
6. close the file
7. display the word and length

I'm assuming you know how to do each step, and it's the steps you needed. If you need more than this I can help more. Let me know.

aizu · 2002-12-09 12:25 pm

assuming ANSI C
this is a summary, probably won't compile as is:

#include <fstream>
#include <string>
#include <iostream>

ifstream x;
string y="*"; //string or character array
int z;
string longestword;

x.open("file")

do
{
z=strlen(y);
x>>y;
if(strlen(y)>z)
{z=strlen(y);longestword=y;}//yeah, so that's the only descriptive variable I used
}
while(x);

Superpual · 2002-12-10 8:49 am

Thanks for your help, worked very well.

dstaudigel · 2002-12-31 3:32 pm

Personally, I would do it in C (why am I so old-school at 15?), but, other than that, I would use a while loop, not a do-while loop, that way, if the file is bad, it skips over it altogether.

Daniel Staudigel

Tetrachloride · 2003-01-02 12:10 am

I asked my Computer Science teacher and he said "Find out on the internet".

Probably, your comp sci teacher thought the question was too easy.
--------
Time for a story, Almost 2 and one half decades ago, I heard this -- The professor gave his students the assignment: "write a program to enter 2 numbers, add them together and print it out." It seems that it took the whole class working together to figure it out.

dstaudigel · 2003-01-02 12:40 am

I asked my Computer Science teacher and he said "Find out on the internet".
Probably, your comp sci teacher thought the question was too easy.
--------
Time for a story, Almost 2 and one half decades ago, I heard this -- The professor gave his students the assignment: "write a program to enter 2 numbers, add them together and print it out." It seems that it took the whole class working together to figure it out.

Still, what a lame-ass comp-sci teacher.

Tetrachloride · 2003-01-02 2:32 am

dstaudigel wrote:
I asked my Computer Science teacher and he said "Find out on the internet".
Probably, your comp sci teacher thought the question was too easy.

Still, what a lame-ass comp-sci teacher.
Very possibly. A more direct hint would have been to say, "look in the standard functions library".

Some judgment depends on whether this is a university level entrance course where half of the goal is to make as many students as possible drop the course, or a friendly high school, tech school, or local college course. 1-2 of my university instructors have been rather callous, out of the bunch I had. Some judgment depends on whether the instructor thought th e student was smart but lazy, or somewhat smart, etc. I would say only 1 of my instructors really had a talent for getting the numerous messages across, 2-4 others were pretty okay, 1-4 deserved to a demotion, or even to be fired.

Forums | MacLife

#1 2002-12-09 9:56 am

Comp Sci teacher doesn't know this...

#2 2002-12-09 10:26 am

Re: Comp Sci teacher doesn't know this...

#3 2002-12-09 12:25 pm

Re: Comp Sci teacher doesn't know this...

#4 2002-12-10 8:49 am

Re: Comp Sci teacher doesn't know this...

#5 2002-12-31 3:32 pm

Re: Comp Sci teacher doesn't know this...

#6 2003-01-02 12:10 am

Re: Comp Sci teacher doesn't know this...

#7 2003-01-02 12:40 am

Re: Comp Sci teacher doesn't know this...

#8 2003-01-02 2:32 am

Re: Comp Sci teacher doesn't know this...

dstaudigel wrote:

#9 2003-01-02 10:14 am

Re: Comp Sci teacher doesn't know this...

Tetrachloride wrote:

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