Question

[Stephen Foy]

Hi, im writing a program that involves outputting the lyrics to the song "99 bits of bytes on the bus", im just wondering if theres a more effective way of putting this part of the code. Maybe into a string, to i dont have it looking all compacted together?

                System.out.print(number-- + " bytes of bits on the bus, \n"+ (number+1) + " bytes of bus \nTake two down, \nshort them to ground. \n"+ (number+1) + " bytes of bits on the bus");
                System.out.println("\n");

[Stan James]

I'd put the decrementer on a line by itself for sure. Even experienced coders have to look twice when it's in a line with other stuff.

i = 99
while i > 0
   print line using i and i-1
   i--
end while

If you're in Java 5 look at PrintStream.printf() as a way to avoid all that concatenation. If you just want to make it look neater and fit in a decent margin, you can use multiple print statements. In fact you already used two, so you're on the way ...

print i bytes of bits on the bus
print i bytes of bits
print take 2 down ...
i--
print i bytes of bits on the bus
print \n

Ooo, look how i-- fit in there this time. I'm not sure if I like mixing decrementing with printing. How about you?

PS: Just reread and saw that you're shorting out two bits at a time, not one. If that's right, i-- won't quite do it!
[ October 26, 2005: Message edited by: Stan James ]

[Jesper de Jong]

If you don't want to have it "looking all compacted together", then why did you write one long line with "\n" in between?

And System.out.println("\n"); prints two linefeeds.

System.out.println(number-- + " bytes of bits on the bus, ");
System.out.println((number+1) + " bytes of bus ");
System.out.println("Take two down, ");
System.out.println("short them to ground. ");
System.out.println((number+1) + " bytes of bits on the bus");
System.out.println("\n");

[Stephen Foy]

Originally posted by Jesper de Jong:
If you don't want to have it "looking all compacted together", then why did you write one long line with "\n" in between?

And System.out.println("\n"); prints two linefeeds.

System.out.println(number-- + " bytes of bits on the bus, ");
System.out.println((number+1) + " bytes of bus ");
System.out.println("Take two down, ");
System.out.println("short them to ground. ");
System.out.println((number+1) + " bytes of bits on the bus");
System.out.println("\n");

I suppose that would have been better. ta