Re: Konvalina/Wileman exercises

CBFalconer said:

> Richard Heathfield wrote:
>> I am concerned at the apparent lack of
>> robustness of read and readln. For example, I tried running ex08
>> and giving an input of 'frog', and got this output:
>> 
>> Runtime error 106 at $080480E4
>>   $080480E4
>>   $0804809F
>> 
>> If this were C, I'd have added a lot more validation, but I don't
>> quite see how to do that with readln - at least, not yet.
> 
> Well, my Pascal systems included a readx() function, which returned
> any error.  But that is an extension.  The manual is on my site.

<nod> but it suddenly occurred to me that the chances of my ever using 
readln in a real program are minimal. If I ever do end up using Pascal 
in the real world, it will probably be because of Delphi, for which of 
course one gets one's input in other ways. So I'm really making a fuss 
about nothing at all. Silly me.

Another six are up now for peer review:

http://www.cpax.org.uk/prg/****table/pascal/pwp/exercises/ch04/index.php

#1 is ugly, no two ways about it. I was determined to use loops, even 
when it meant coming up with the most truly abysmal customised hash 
I've ever seen.

The race-track one (#4) threw me for a while, before I realised I could 
chuck the car's mass away - it turns out to be irrelevant to the 
problem.

The last one - the trig thing - is probably the flakiest. I'm not too 
hot on these array things - Pascal's handling of arrays is a bit 
bizarre to my mind.

-- 
Richard Heathfield
"Usenet is a strange place" - dmr 29/7/1999
http://www.cpax.org.uk
email: rjh at the above domain, - www.