Month: May 2016

Find the max value

~ frededison ~ Leave a comment

Another open university assignment. Again Pascal.

Write a program max that reads integer values from standard input and returns the max value.
0 terminates the input.

This is my solution:

screenshot_93.png

And this is the university’s solution:

screenshot_92.png

So what’s the difference?

A bit nicer structure. But basically the same program.

screenshot_95.png

Why do we need an additional readln (Number)?

screenshot_96.png

This is an optimization. E.g. in case I enter the number 8 first and then the number 0, the while-loop will not be executed. Otherwise (without readln (Number)) we enter the while-loop, perform an unnecessary check (if Number > MaxNumber; if 8 > 8), then read the 0 and exit the while-loop. My solution actually performs this unnecessary step as well.

Understood.

Pascal

~ frededison ~ Leave a comment

I am learning Pascal. Pascal? Pascal in 2016? Yes, Pascal!

I enrolled in an Open University course on imperative programming and unfortunately the university’s language of choice is Pascal. Currently I’m really struggling with the language’s syntax. All those begins and ends, semicolons, no semicolons…

But I’m in no position to judge a programming language. And let’s not forget, Pascal was used by Donald E. Knuth to create Tex!!

So I either give up or I better get my sh… together.

The first exercise is a simple merge program. Two already sorted lists have to be merged into a single result list.

List1 = [11, 14, 18, 80, 100]
List2 = [8, 11, 11, 17, 22, 30, 55, 70]
ResultList = [8, 11, 11, 11, 14, 17, 18, 22, 30, 55, 70, 80, 100]

It’s not allowed to…

  • …copy both lists to the result list and then sort its elements.
  • …copy one list to the result list and then insert the elements of the second list in the correct order.

This is the given program frame without implementation of the merge algorithm:

screenshot_84.png

And this is a possible implementation of the merge algorithm:

screenshot_85.png

We start by comparing the first value of the first list with the first value of the second list.
Either the value of Field1[1] is less than the value of Field2[1], equal to the value of Field2[1] or greater than the value of Field2[1].

List1[1] < List2[1] → Copy the value of List1[1] to the result list at first position (ResultList[1] := List1[1]).
Increase the counter i for List1 and k for ResultList.

List1[1] >= List2[1] → Copy the value of List2[1] to the result list at first position (ResultList[1] := List2[1]).
Increase the counter j for List2 and k for ResultList.

Wash, rinse, repeat until one of the two lists (List1, List2) runs out of elements:
while (i <= LISTLENGTH1) and (j <= LISTLENGTH2) do…

That’s how we start:

screenshot_86.png

First step:

screenshot_87.png

Second step:

screenshot_88.png

And so on.

This is how the while loop ends. List2 runs out of elements first:

screenshot_89.png

We are out of the while loop, but do not know which one of our two lists still holds some elements. This is done by if i > LISTLENGTH1 then.
4 > 5? No, so it must be List2.

We iterate over the remaining elements in List2 and add each element to our result list. Let’s not forget to increase the counter for j and k each time we copy an element.

Et voilà. Done.