Instructor's Solution to 4b

[Adam Price]

Hmmm - I spent a lot of time trying to get the spacing to always come out right - my nitpicker didn't like my first attempts because they involved excessive if statements (true enough) I then approached it by having the first character of certain strings actually be "\b", the backspace character to retroactively remove spaces in certain cases. That worked, but got nitpicked out. In the end, I just dropped the struggle, wanting to pass, and left the bug in there.

I just tried out the instructor's solution and am [relieved? secretly pleased?] to note that it has the same error. If you have a hundreds digit but no tens or ones, there is an extra space between the word "hundred" and the period name (million, billion, etc.)
as in:

  [ ami Say/]$ java15 Say 700000
seven hundred  thousand, 
  

-Adam

[Marilyn de Queiroz]

true

[Pauline McNamara]

No other "bugs" in that example?
[ February 22, 2006: Message edited by: Pauline McNamara ]

[Adam Price]

Originally posted by Pauline McNamara:
No other "bugs" in that example?

Oh yeah - that too.

[Marilyn de Queiroz]

Hmmm. I guess that particular number was never tested by the instructor.

[Adam Price]

Originally posted by Marilyn de Queiroz:
Hmmm. I guess that particular number was never tested by the instructor.

I think I found the problem - it is in the beginning of main:

  
if ( arg[0] == 700000 ) 
    {
    System.out.print( "seven hundred  thousand," );
    }  
else
{
.
.
.
etc

[Stuart Goss]

hihihi

Stuart

[paul wheaton]

Hey Adam - you indenting is all cattywumpus in your code sample!

This is a bug in the instructor's solution! I'll have to take a look at it tonight!

[Adam Price]

Originally posted by Paul Wheaton:
Hey Adam - you indenting is all cattywumpus in your code sample!

This is a bug in the instructor's solution! I'll have to take a look at it tonight!

MY indenting?? But I quoted it directly out of the instructor's solution

Could someone send me the revised instructor's solution when it comes out? I promise not to make up any more outrageous lies about what it says.

-Adam

[Pauline McNamara]

You mean that wasn't the real solution?

We can send you that Ray. If you don't hear from someone for a while, it's probably a good idea to post back here and prod a little.

Thanks for the input!

[paul wheaton]

I looked around on my computer and the solution I found was five years old. I asked Marilyn for an update. The two version do work slightly differently.

This sort of thing just cries out for unit testing. I'm also thinking of changing the way things are done a bit .... I'm also thinking that it could be a good candidate for a quick trip to something slightly more advanced (the world of unit testing).

Maybe the idea should be to permit a klunky version at this point, and then after the OO stuff, and the ant stuff, we can move into unit testing and come up with some better solutions.

[Carol Murphy]

I like the sound of that! Now I have to research unit testing.....
(Still muddling through the ANT stuff in my spare time, which has been precious little as of late. )

[Pauline McNamara]

Originally posted by Paul Wheaton:

Maybe the idea should be to permit a klunky version at this point, and then after the OO stuff, and the ant stuff, we can move into unit testing and come up with some better solutions.

I'm not sure I'm following.

So are you saying you're thinking of adding a Unit Testing section to the assignments, and using code like this instructor's solution as the test code, and cleaning it up that way?

[Marilyn de Queiroz]

We're working on it. More news as events warrent.

[Marilyn de Queiroz]

I sent a copy to Adam.