c-lesson.8

The source code in a tutorial.

                                     Lesson 7.

                             De-bugging Strategies.

      >>>>>>>> Proper Preparation Prevents Piss-Poor Performance. <<<<<<<<

  This lesson is really a essay about how to go about writing programs.

  I know that by far the best way to greatly reduce the amount of effort
required to get a program going properly is to avoid making mistakes in the
first palace! Now this might seem to be stating the absolute obvious, and it
is but after looking at many programs it would seem that there is a very
definite need to say it.

  So how does one go about reducing the probability of making mistakes?

  There are many strategies, and over the years I have evolved my own set.
  I have found that some of the most important are:

  1) Document what you are going to do before yes BEFORE you write any code.
     Set up the source files for the section of the program you are going to
     write and put some lines of explanation as to what you intend to do in
     this file. Be as precise as you can, but don't go into the detail of
     explaining in English, or your First Language, exactly what every
     statement does.

  2) Make sure that you keep each file as small as is sensible. Some program
     authors say that one should put only one function in a file. It's my
     personal opinion that this is going a little bit over the top, but
     certainly you should not have more than one logical activity in a source
     file. It's easier to find a needle in a tiny haystack than in a big one!

  3) Always use names for the objects in your program which are fully
     descriptive, or at the very least are meaningful nmemonics. Put yourself
     in the position of some poor soul who - a couple of years later, after you
     have long finished with the project, and left the country - has been given
     the task of adding a small feature to your exquisite program. Now in the
     rush to get your masterpiece finished you decided to use variable names
     like "a4" and "isb51" simply so that you can get the line typed a
     fraction of a second faster than if you used something like
     "customer_address[POST_CODE]" and "input_status_block[LOW_FUEL_TANK_#3].
     The difference in ease of understanding is obvious, isn't it? However
     judging by some programs which I have seen published in both magazines and
     in the public domain program sources, the point has still to be made.

  4) ALWAYS take great care with the layout of your code.
     It's my opinion that the opening brace of ALL program structures should
     be on a new line. Also if you put them in the leftmost column for structs,
     enums, and initialised tables, as well as functions, then the
     'find function' keystrokes ( "[[" and "]]" ) in vi will find them as well
     as the functions themselves. Make sure you have the "showmatch" facility
     in vi turned on. ( And watch the cursor jump when you enter the
     right hand brace, bracket, or parenthesis. )

  5) Try as hard as you can to have as few global variables as possible.
     Some people say never have any globals. This is perhaps a bit too
     severe but global variables are a clearly documented source of
     programming errors. If it's impossible to perform a logical activity
     in an efficient way without having a global or two, then confine
     the scope of the globals to just the one file by marking the defining
     declaration "static". This stops the compiler producing a symbol which
     the linking loader will make available to all the files in your source.

  6) Never EVER put 'magic numbers' in you source code. Always define constants
     in a header file with #define lines or enum statements.

     Here is an example:-


/* ----------------------------------------- */

#include <stdio.h>

enum status_input_names
{
  radiator_temperature,
  oil_temperature,
  fuel_pressure,
  energy_output,
  revolutions_per_minute
  };

char *stats[] =
{
  "radiator_temperature",
  "oil_temperature",
  "fuel_pressure",
  "energy_output",
  "revolutions_per_minute"
  };

#define NUMBER_OF_INPUTS ( sizeof ( stats ) / sizeof ( stats[0]))

main()
{
  enum status_input_names name;

  printf ( "Number of Inputs is: %d\n", NUMBER_OF_INPUTS );
  for ( name = radiator_temperature; name < NUMBER_OF_INPUTS; name++)
  {
    printf ( "\n%s", stats[ name ] );
    }
  printf ( "\n\n" );
  }

/* ----------------------------------------- */

  Note that as a side effect we have available the meaningful symbols
  radiator_temperature etc. as indices into the array of status input names
  and the symbol NUMBER_OF_INPUTS available for use as a terminator in the
  'for' loop. This is quite legal because sizeof is a pseudo-function and the
  value is evaluated at the time of compilation and not when the program is
  executed. This means that the result of the division in the macro is
  calculated at the time of compilation and this result is used as a literal
  in the 'for' loop. No division takes place each time the loop is executed.

  To illustrate the point I would like to tell you a little story which is
  fictitious, but which has a ring of truth about it.
  Your employer has just landed what seems to be a lucrative contract with
  an inventor of a completely new type of engine. We are assured that after
  initial proving trials one of the larger Japanese motor manufactures is
  going to come across with umpteen millions to complete the development of
  the design. You are told to write a program which has to be a simple and
  straightforward exercise in order to do the job as cheaply as possible.
  Now, the customer - a some-what impulsive type - realises that his
  engine is not being monitored closely enough when it starts to rapidly
  dis-assemble itself under high speed and heavy load. You have to add a
  few extra parameters to the monitoring program by yesterday morning!
  You just add the extra parameters into the enumand the array of pointers
  to the character strings. So:

enum status_input_names
{ radiator_temperature,
  radiator_pressure,
  fuel_temperature,
  fuel_pressure,
  oil_temperature,
  oil_pressure,
  exhaust_manifold_temperature
  };

  Let's continue the story about the Japanese purchase. Mr. Honda ( jun ) has
  come across with the money and the result is that you are now a team leader
  in the software section of Honda Software ( YourCountry ) Ltd. The project of
  which you are now leader is to completely rewrite your monitoring program and
  add a whole lot of extra channels as well as to make the printouts much more
  readable so that your cheap, cheerful, and aesthetic-free program can be sold
  as the "Ultimate Engine Monitoring Package" from the now world famous Honda
  Real-time Software Systems. You set to work, Honda et. al. imagine that there
  is going to be a complete redesign of the software at a cost of many million
  Yen. You being an ingenious type have written the code so that it is easy to
  enhance.

  The new features required are that the printouts have to be printed with the
  units of measure appended to the values which have to scaled and processed so
  that the number printed is a real physical value instead of the previous
  arrangement where the raw transducer output was just dumped onto a screen.

  What do you have to do?

  Thinking along the line of "Get the Data arranged correctly first".
  You take you old code and expand it so that all the items of information
  required for each channel are collected into a struct.

enum status_input_names
{
  radiator_temperature,
  radiator_pressure,
  fuel_temperature,
  fuel_pressure,
  oil_temperature,
  oil_pressure,
  exhaust_manifold_temperature,
  power_output,
  torque
  };

typedef struct channel
{
  char *name;                    /* Channel Name to be displayed on screen. */
  int nx;                        /* position of name on screen x co-ordinate.
*/
  int ny;                        /* ditto for y */
  int unit_of_measure;           /* index into units of measure array */
  char value;                    /* raw datum value from 8 bit ADC */
  char lower_limit;              /* For alarms. */
  char upper_limit;
  float processed_value;         /* The number to go on screen. */
  float offset;
  float scale_factor;
  int vx;                        /* Position of value on screen. */
  int vy;
  }CHANNEL;

enum units_of_measure { kPa, degC, kW, rpm, Volts, Amps, Newtons };

char *units { "kPa", "degC", "kW", "rpm", "Volts", "Amps", "Newtons" };

CHANNEL data [] =
{
  { "radiator temperature",
  { "radiator pressure",
  { "fuel temperature",
  { "fuel pressure",
  { "oil temperature",
  { "oil pressure",
  { "exhaust manifold temperature",
  { "power output",
  { "torque",
  };

#define NUMBER_OF_INPUTS sizeof (data ) / sizeof ( data[0] )

Now the lesson preparation is to find the single little bug in the above
program fragment, to finish the initialisation of the data array of type
CHANNEL and to have a bit of a crack at creating a screen layout
program to display its contents. Hint: Use printf();
( Leave all the values which originate from the real world as zero. )


  Here are some more tips for young players.

  1) Don't get confused between the logical equality operator,

     ==

     and the assignment to a variable operator.

     =

     This is probably the most frequent mistake made by 'C' beginners, and
     has the great disadvantage that, under most circumstances, the compiler
     will quite happily accept your mistake.

  2) Make sure that you are aware of the difference between the logical
     and bit operators.

     &&         This is the logical AND function.
     ||         This is the logical OR function.
                The result is ALWAYS either a 0 or a 1.

     &          This is the bitwise AND function used for masks etc.
                The result is expressed in all the bits of the word.

  3) Similarly to 2 be aware of the difference between the logical
     complementation and the bitwise one's complement operators.

     !          This is the logical NOT operator.
     ~          This is the bitwise ones complement op.

     Some further explanation is required. In deference to machine efficiency a