What does “hard coded” mean

definitionhard-coding

My assignment asks me to access a test.txt document, so the file name has to be hard coded to my C drive. I have no idea what hardcoding means. Can somebody please help me with this?

Best Answer

"hard coding" means putting something into your source code. If you are not hard coding, then you do something like prompting the user for the data, or allow the user to put the data on the command line, or something like that.

So, to hard code the location of the file as being on the C: drive, you would just put the pathname of the file all together in your source code.

Here is an example.

int main()
{
    const char *filename = "C:\\myfile.txt";

    printf("Filename is: %s\n", filename);
}

The file name is "hard coded" as: C:\myfile.txt

The reason the backslash is doubled is because backslashes are special in C strings.

Related Solutions

Javascript – ‘Currying’

Currying is when you break down a function that takes multiple arguments into a series of functions that each take only one argument. Here's an example in JavaScript:

function add (a, b) {
  return a + b;
}

add(3, 4); // returns 7

This is a function that takes two arguments, a and b, and returns their sum. We will now curry this function:

function add (a) {
  return function (b) {
    return a + b;
  }
}

This is a function that takes one argument, a, and returns a function that takes another argument, b, and that function returns their sum.

add(3)(4);

var add3 = add(3);

add3(4);

The first statement returns 7, like the add(3, 4) statement. The second statement defines a new function called add3 that will add 3 to its argument. (This is what some may call a closure.) The third statement uses the add3 operation to add 3 to 4, again producing 7 as a result.

An example of the Liskov Substitution Principle

A great example illustrating LSP (given by Uncle Bob in a podcast I heard recently) was how sometimes something that sounds right in natural language doesn't quite work in code.

In mathematics, a Square is a Rectangle. Indeed it is a specialization of a rectangle. The "is a" makes you want to model this with inheritance. However if in code you made Square derive from Rectangle, then a Square should be usable anywhere you expect a Rectangle. This makes for some strange behavior.

Imagine you had SetWidth and SetHeight methods on your Rectangle base class; this seems perfectly logical. However if your Rectangle reference pointed to a Square, then SetWidth and SetHeight doesn't make sense because setting one would change the other to match it. In this case Square fails the Liskov Substitution Test with Rectangle and the abstraction of having Square inherit from Rectangle is a bad one.

Y'all should check out the other priceless SOLID Principles Motivational Posters.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Javascript – ‘Currying’

An example of the Liskov Substitution Principle

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