This question is language agnostic but is inspired by these c/c++ questions. How to convert a single char into an int Char to int conversion in C Is it safe to assume that the characters for digits (0123456789) appear contigiously in all text encodings? i.e. is it safe to assume that '9'-'8' = 1 '9'-'7' = 2 ... '9'-'0' = 9 in all...
I'm interested in looking at architectures for extensible network serving applications. I'm not too interested in the protocol, or the language used, more in the elegance and extensibility of the design. Of course Apache comes to mind, but I was wondering if anyone had any other examples that they find a pleasure to work with. EDIT: j...
If you have 1,000,0000 source files, you suspect they are all the same, and you want to compare them what is the current fasted method to compare those files? Assume they are Java files and platform where the comparison is done is not important. cksum is making me cry. When I mean identical I mean ALL identical. Update: I know about ...
For example, can an experienced coder with limited C#.NET experience be successfully paired with an experienced C#.NET coder with the secondary aim of getting the former up to speed with C#.NET? ...
Ok, this may seem like a silly question, but it is seriously bugging me. Hoping some fellow programmer has a good word for it! Thing is, I am making an ExpressionBuilder class to help me build up expressions to use with LinqToSQL. And my problem is about how word myself when describing what two methods. And it kind of is a problem in ge...
For a client/server application I need to centrally store parts of the configuration information that usually goes into the users profile directory. The client application would on first use write a file or registry entry with a GUID into the current profile. This GUID would subsequently be used as a key in the configuration database on...
Scroll down to see latest edit, I left all this text here just so that I don't invalidate the replies this question has received so far! I have the following brain teaser I'd like to get a solution for, I have tried to solve this but since I'm not mathematically that much above average (that is, I think I'm very close to average) I ca...
I'm tasked with implementing a messaging system for a real-time simulation. There are several different kinds of messaging objects that need to exist in this system, and more might be added in the future. These objects represent the primary means of communication between the players in the sim. Assuming I fully understand my requireme...
I am working on a roguelike in my (very little) free time. Each level will basically be a few rectangular rooms connected together by paths. I want the paths between rooms to be natural-looking and windy, however. For example, I would not consider the following natural-looking: B X X X ...
Hi all, I want to implement a discrete remote authentication server that handles login for many sites. Somewhat similar to OpenID. Basically, I have site-1 and site-2 and they're both reliant on the same user database, which is on a separate auth-site. So, auth-site handles user authentication for them, and during this process, makes i...
I'm having a hard time trying to refactor some pieces of code with many branches. There are many if/then/else blocks, some of them are nested. Are there any tricks that can be used to refactor the code without wasting a lot of time trying to understand every minor aspect of the functionality first? For now I'm basically using boolean a...
Is it possible to iterate over a binary tree in O(1) auxiliary space (w/o using a stack, queue, etc.), or has this been proven impossible? If it is possible, how can it be done? Edit: The responses I've gotten about this being possible if there are pointers to parent nodes are interesting and I didn't know that this could be done, but...
I found this question, but didn't see a good answer. I'm interested specifically in configuration files, say in XML. Are there cross-language standard/tools for reading config files? XML itself is just a medium, but I want tools and libraries and standards, like those existing in .Net's ConfigurationSection class. My main targets are ja...
Im currently implementing an interpreter for Scheme, and plan on reading Elements of Programming Languages and design a toy language for learning purpose. What kind of jobs are out there that require language design skills? ...
Let's say I have an array of floating point numbers, in sorted (let's say ascending) order, whose sum is known to be an integer N. I want to "round" these numbers to integers while leaving their sum unchanged. In other words, I'm looking for an algorithm that converts the array of floating-point numbers (call it fn) to an array of integ...
I have seen a disturbing trend where websites are starting to require verification sent to cellphones by text message (SMS). Gmail and Facebook are two of them. What I want to know are the following: Is it a good idea to start requiring cellphones instead of emails now? How do I do it on my own website? Edit Here are some of my new ...
The options for source code diff viewing/editing/merging seem to be: Free: Tortoise Merge Meld * WinDiff WinMerge * DiffMerge * KDiff AJC Diff Diffuse Commercial: Total Commander's Diff viewer * Beyond Compare * Delta Walker * Araxis Merge * Are there any other options? (Wikipedia suggests a few) What's your favorite tools fo...
Found myself trying to find a link to an official definition of this design pattern which I believe I saw in Go4 but can't seem to find it anywhere. class Processor{ ProcessParameter(AbstractParameter x){ x.Process(this); } ProcessParameter(ParameterA x){ ... A-specific logic... } ProcessParameter(Paramet...
I have a primary key that I don't want to auto increment (for various reasons) and so I'm looking for a way to simply increment that field when I INSERT. By simply, I mean without stored procedures and without triggers, so just a series of SQL commands (preferably one command). Here is what I have tried thus far: BEGIN TRAN INSERT INT...
I have a set of events that must occur randomly, but in a predefined frequency. i.e over a course of (totally) infinite events, event A should have occured 10% of the times, event B should have occured 3%, and so on... Of course the total sum of the percentages of the event list will add upto 100. I want to achieve this programmaticall...