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Top Forums Programming Pure C function pointer on printing vowels twice Post 302997584 by Don Cragun on Wednesday 17th of May 2017 02:17:53 AM
Old 05-17-2017
Quote:
Originally Posted by yifangt
Have difficulty to understand this pure C code to only print vowels twice from input string. Questions are commented at the end of each place.
Code:
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <assert.h>
#include <limits.h>
/*
 *Demonstrate the use of dispatch tables
 */

/*Print a char twice like putchar, return char if successful, or EOF on error.*/

int putcharTwice(int c)
{
    if (putchar(c) == EOF || putchar(c) == EOF)  {//Q1
    return EOF;
    } else {
    return c;
    }
}

#define NUM_CHARS (UCHAR_MAX + 1)    //UCHAR_MAX is in limits.h

int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
/*This declares table as array of function pointers */
    int (*table[NUM_CHARS]) (int);   //Q2
    int i;
    int c;

    for (i = 0; i < UCHAR_MAX; i++) {
    /* default is to call putchar */
    table[i] = putchar;
    }

    /*but lower-case vowels show up twice */
    table['a'] = putcharTwice; //Q3, and following 4 lines
    table['e'] = putcharTwice; //Q3
    table['i'] = putcharTwice; //Q3
    table['o'] = putcharTwice; //Q3
    table['u'] = putcharTwice; //Q3

    while ((c = getchar()) != EOF) {
    table[c] (c); //Q4,
    }
    return 0;
}

The code was compiled without any problem,
Code:
$ echo "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog!" | ./a.out
$ Thee quuiick broown foox juumps ooveer thee laazy doog!

Q1: How does the logic work by repeating the same condition on both sides of "||" ? I tried using only one side of the OR condition, the code compiled without error but did not work as expected.
putchar(c) returns 0 on success or EOF on error. So, if the first putchar(c) succeeds, the second putchar(c) will also be executed. If both of them succeed, the expression tested will be 0 || 0 and the else side of the if statement will have putcharTwice() return c. If either putchar(c) failed, putcharTwice() will return EOF.

Quote:
Q2:Even not quite sure how to ask this question. Is this a prototype of a function? But the calling is without any parameter see Q3.
int (*table[NUM_CHARS]) (int); is a declaration stating that table is an array of 256 pointers to functions and those functions take one argument of type int and return an int.

Quote:
Q3: Calling of the function does not have a parameter at all. How does it work?
Code:
    for (i = 0; i < UCHAR_MAX; i++) {
    /* default is to call putchar */
    table[i] = putchar;
    }

sets the 1st 255 of the 256 elements of the table[] array to be a pointer to the putchar() function. It does not call putchar().

Code:
    /*but lower-case vowels show up twice */
    table['a'] = putcharTwice;

resets the elements of the table[] array corresponding the the character a to point to the function putcharTwice(). And the following statements do the same thing for the other lowercase vowels in the English alphabet. These assignments do not call putchar() or putcharTwice() either.

Quote:
Q4: I thought I understand this line, but I must have wrong catch because of Q2.
Code:
    while ((c = getchar()) != EOF) {
    table[c] (c); //Q4,
    }

is a loop that reads one character at a time from standard input until it detects an error or end-of-file condition. For each character read, it calls the function specified by the element of table[] corresponding to the character read with an argument that is the character read.

Quote:
Thanks a lot!
Hope this helps.
These 2 Users Gave Thanks to Don Cragun For This Post:
 

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