Path: csiph.com!eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!nntp.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Tim Rentsch Newsgroups: comp.lang.c Subject: Re: Sort of trivial code challenge - may be interesting to you anyway Date: Thu, 05 Mar 2026 14:04:42 -0800 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 35 Message-ID: <864imuc4qt.fsf@linuxsc.com> References: <10n80sc$3soe4$1@dont-email.me> <86v7feei2e.fsf@linuxsc.com> <10o53k6$1i0ef$2@dont-email.me> <86ms0peby6.fsf@linuxsc.com> <10ockdh$3qpk6$1@dont-email.me> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Injection-Date: Thu, 05 Mar 2026 22:04:48 +0000 (UTC) Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="e10200766ffc466ebfe6a0b9c1907eec"; logging-data="177772"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1+StVs4IMFPH7Cj22kQH0WwXABzGK2HIrA=" User-Agent: Gnus/5.11 (Gnus v5.11) Emacs/22.4 (gnu/linux) Cancel-Lock: sha1:8lwB5cdQpdWbXf843rP5Y7NOuG0= sha1:UAM1jAhyXMVnUEWYxYbIJTiBZV0= Xref: csiph.com comp.lang.c:396798 Lew Pitcher writes: > On Mon, 02 Mar 2026 21:09:21 -0800, Tim Rentsch wrote: > [snip] > >> The latest challenge, which I just got through doing, is to >> disallow if, for, while, goto, return, and to forbid functions >> and function calls except for calls to C standard library >> functions. Also no math library. :) > > Inventive, aren't you :-) Yes I do enjoy looking at alternative approaches. Guilty as charged. :) > I've got a working matrix print that (I think) satisfies your > requirements, but have not started on the argument processing > logic yet. I may, yet again, revise my approach, as the solution > I'm using is quite tedious to code. Yeah, argument processing is a bitch, especially if you want to guard against malformed invocations. It's vaguely satisfying to find an approach that doesn't suck. >> The program is a bit on the long side because of argument >> processing but the matrix print code is less than 20 lines, >> including 5 blank lines. > > 20 lines, including 4 blank lines, but I can reduce it a bit. > I should be able to match (or at least approximate) your line > count. I've just gone through my first (and probably last) rewrite, and the result is a lot cleaner. I won't say more just now, and let you continue on your current path.