looping in C...

[provisional_idiot]

so im trying to write a nested for loop:


#define EMPTY 0
int board[7][7];
int countx, county;
for (county=0; county < 7 ; county++)
{
for (countx=0; countx < 7 ; countx++)
{
printf("(%d,%d) ", countx, county);
board[countx][county]=EMPTY;
}
}


which does everything correctly...however if I change those 7's to 8's in the for statement, I get an infinite loop and I have no idea why

in particular county does NOT increment, why I dont know

[cb951303]

it's not infinte. it's just a big random number ;)

[mike_g]

You should be aware that by setting the loops to run to 8 you will be writing out of buffer. Maybe try resizing your arrays as well.

[provisional_idiot]

resizing the array did the trick, however it seems like a waste of memory to allocate space for an additional 17 integers that I'll never use....

[jespdj]

The array 'board' has only 7 x 7 = 49 elements. If you change the 7's in the loops to 8's, then you are trying to access elements in the array that don't exist. You can't do that without getting strange results.

If you let the loops run from 0 to 7 (instead of 0 to 6), then you'll ofcourse also need to change the size of the 'board' array.

[LaRoza]

Instead of hardcoding the values, you might want to use a #define, so you only have to track one number.

[pmasiar]

One of basic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_smell criteria is using "magic numbers", like your 7. Always should be #defined

[fyplinux]

Instead of hardcoding the values, you might want to use a #define, so you only have to track one number.

And countx and county are not good naming style, they are somehow too similar that only have one different character, you may easy to get lost.

[LaRoza]

One of basic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_smell criteria is using "magic numbers", like your 7. Always should be #defined

Thanks for that article. (Naturally, I clicked on links in it as well)

I liked the God Object, it sounded like a fitting subject for Xkcd.

Back to subject:

You could also use const if you are using the latest C standard.

[LaRoza]

And countx and county are not good naming style, they are somehow too similar that only have one different character, you may easy to get lost.

You are right, I didn't see those two variables, and got a little confused for a moment.

xcount and ycount may be better.

Also, declaring multiple variables on a single line isn't (IMO) a good thing to do

[pmasiar]

Thanks for that article.

If you are in "education mode", you may dive into original wiki - Portland Pattern Repository (for code patterns) c2.com. You can see that Ward Cunningham registered domain really early, in '95, way before own domain was cool thing to have :-)

http://c2.com/xp/CodeSmell.html

Be careful, don't spend whole weekend there, your brain might burst :-)