First assignment

First Assignment, due in on Tuesday 1st February

This is only a little assignment to get you moving. It doesn't involve very much. There are two real purposes: 1, to make sure that everyone can actually write a program that really works; 2, to make you remember how to edit, create, and debug program before I need to set something more complex.

The Assignment

Write a program in C, that allows the user to type a number of strings (one per line, to keep it simple), then sorts those strings, and prints them out in ascending order.

Strong Recommendation

First, forget about strings, and write the program to read, sort, and print out a list of Numbers. That way, you can get your program to work without having to worry about the peculiarities of strings. Then when it really works perfectly, Make a copy of it and Keep It Safe. Once you have got a program that works properly for numbers, just make the little modifications required to support strings instead. If you don't solve all the string-related problems in time, you can submit the working number sorter that you kept safe and still get some credit.

How it should Run

There are two acceptable ways for it to work. The simplest is that you run the program, it asks you how many strings you are going to enter, and then lets you enter them. It would look something like this (underlined things are typed by the user):

          $ cc hw1.c -o hw1
          $ hw1
          How many strings? 3
          Enter 3 strings now
          : dog
          : bat
          : cat
          Sorted strings are
          bat
          cat
          dog
          $

It always seems to me to be a little unprofessional making the user work out in advance how much data they are about to enter. I think it would be much better to just let the user type strings, and have a special mark (like an empty line) at the end. That way, it would look something like this:

          $ cc hw1.c -o hw1
          $ hw1
          Enter some strings now, with a blank line at the end
          : dog
          : bat
          : cat
          : 
          Sorted strings are
          bat
          cat
          dog
          $

Submission

This assignment must be submitted electronically before the end of Tuesday 1st February 2000. You do not need to turn it in during class, just before the end of the day (midnight). Remember that you can use any computer you like for the working, but the program you submit must run on rabbit.
To submit your answer, use the "submit" program on rabbit. Assuming that your answer is in the file "hw1.c" as above, you would type this command:

          $ submit 218 hw1 hw1.c
          hw1.c submitted
          $

If there is something you need to tell me (or our grading assistants) put it in a file with an obvious name (such as "read.me") and submit that too.

          $ submit 218 hw1 hw1.c read.me
          hw1.c submitted
          read.me submitted
          $

Notes

You may limit the maximum number of strings if you wish, to any reasonable number (let's say 1000). That means that you don't have to worry about linked lists or anything like that. You can just declare an array of 1000 strings and use that.
Ideally, you should not set any real limit on the size of each string, but perfection is not required (this time). You may set a reasonable limit on the size of each string if you want to.