Category: Articles


A simple C++ 3D vector prototype library.

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July 14, 2018

Hello people! I hope you are well!

In this article I would like to present you a simple C++ 3D vector library. This is just a prototype and I am sure you can find other better and more complete alternatives. So, we are just dealing here with a “Yet Another 3D Vector Library”.

I created this library because I wanted to reuse some 3D vector operations in various OpenGL computer graphics exercise programs (from my M.Sc. studies). Of course, I could use an already existing library. However, I wanted also to understand how some basic 3D vector operations work.

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Generic C++ template functions for reading from / writing to the Arduino EEPROM memory.

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July 5, 2018

Hello my Arduino fellows! How are you? The summer is hot! 🙂 In this post I would like to share with you two generic C++ template functions for reading from / writing to the Arduino EEPROM internal memory. I have used in the past these functions successfully in a project and I think that might be also useful to you.

It is a fact that just by looking the contents of a single byte in any memory we are not able to say what the data actually mean. The data or the bit pattern that appears has any meaning we want. It is always the context that gives meaning to data. It could be a memory address, an unsigned integer, a two’s complement signed integer, a machine opcode, an opcode operand, an IEEE-754 floating point number, an ASCII character, noise 🙂

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Digital image processing algorithms implemented with C++ and OpenCV.

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June 25, 2018

Hello my friends! How are you? It’s been a long time since the last time I posted an article! In this one I would like to present you some digital image processing algorithms implemented with C++ and OpenCV.

Although, OpenCV supports most of these algorithms out-of-the-box what I am trying to show you actually is how you could implement these manually with C++. So, OpenCV is used here just only for opening and manipulating an image as a Mat object (OpenCV’s basic image container).

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Creating a Sharded Cluster of Replica Sets in MongoDB.

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February 18, 2017

MongoDB is a great NoSQL database management system. But using a single standalone MongoDB server is not the way you want to use it in the production level. In case you want to scale out and increase the throughput of your application you can use sharding to distribute your data in multiple clusters, called shards. Furthermore, MongoDB can support continuous availability and fault tolerance by using replication servers that form a replica set. A replica set not only provides us a mechanism for fault tolerance and availability but a way for safely and continuously backing up our data. The latency of our database queries can be improved by using primary and secondary indexes.

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Neo4j code infrastructure for .NET enterprise applications.

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July 19, 2016

Here I am, rock you like a hurricane!

The Spring framework from the Java “universe” currently supports efficiently the Neo4j graph database. However, the Spring.NET framework from the C# “universe” does not support Neo4j and generally a decent code infrastructure library for Neo4j is missing from the .NET open source world at the moment.

A starting code infrastructure could be a Generic Repository for supporting CRUD operations, a Relationship Manager for managing relationships between nodes and a Unit Of Work for supporting transactions. In a recent project, I have coded a prototype code infrastructure on my own since I couldn’t find a simple, well-written and unit-testable example. This is the reason why I would like to give it to you people so that you can benefit from it.

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A dynamic string data structure helper implementation.

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October 21, 2014

In this article I will present to you a dynamic string data structure helper implementation. In C, a string is just an array of characters terminated with the null character (NUL in ASCII). Also, some times we handle a string by using a pointer to a buffer containing sequential characters terminated also with the null character. The C standard liibrary provides various functions for string manipulation but it seems that whenever we want to extend a string by using pointers we have to perform all the time memory reallocation which leads to a bad evolution of replicated code. In a recent project, I needed to create a string and append to it any number of new strings in order to extend it without using strcat, strcpy, strlen and realloc functions all the time. So, I created a simple dynamic string data structure which solved my specific problem and I would like to share it with you people.

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A useful function for getting the host name and service of a socket.

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October 20, 2014

In this article I will present to you a useful function for getting the host name and service of a socket.

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Helper functions for handling the PID file of a background daemon.

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October 19, 2014

In this article I will present to you some useful functions for handling the PID file of a background daemon. Most of the background daemons maintain a PID file usually in a well-known path such as the “/var/run”. For example, the GNOME Display Manager which runs as a background daemon (gdm3) maintains the following file “/var/run/gdm3.pid”. A PID file contains the PID number of the daemon process currently running. This information is useful either for validation or for sending various signals to the daemon process. Also, if a background daemon must have a single running instance this can be accomplished by checking if the PID number of the PID file really exists in the system.

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Useful functions for enabling and disabling the non-blocking I/O mode of file descriptors.

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October 18, 2014

In this article I will present to you two useful functions that can be used whenever you want to enable or disable the non-blocking I/O mode of a file descriptor. By using the enable_io_blocking_for_file_descriptor and disable_io_blocking_for_file_descriptor functions you can enable and disable the I/O blocking of a file descriptor.

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A safe wrapper implemented in C for freeing dynamic allocated memory.

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In this article I will present to you a safe wrapper for freeing memory allocated with *alloc family functions. The standard function “void free (void * pointer)” from stdlib library does not check the given pointer to see whether it is NULL and does not NULL terminate the pointer before it returns either. So, setting a pointer to NULL after freeing is considered a good practice, and can reduce the chances of unpredictable behavior if the memory is later accessed; segmentation faults when the memory is no longer accessible and potential security risks.

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Macro definitions for handling interruptible POSIX system calls.

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October 16, 2014

In this article I will present to you some macro definitions for handling interruptible system calls.

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Implementation of functions in C for software signal management in POSIX operating systems – Version 2.

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October 14, 2014

In this article I will present to you a mechanism written in C for handling efficiently software signals in POSIX operating systems. The first thing you have to do is to create the configuration of the signals you want to support. After you decide the appropriate configuration you have to setup the signals support and register the configuration. Later on, when the various software signals occur a generic signal dispatcher will handle the signals according to the specified configuration.

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How to implement an IP-Agnostic server application with POSIX sockets.

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October 8, 2014

In this article I will present to you a POSIX function I wrote that can be used to create a server socket to support both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses (IP-Agnostic). Recently, I needed to support this feature in a server application. The implementation uses POSIX system calls and data structures that can be used as generics to support both IPv4 and IPv6.

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Implementation of a C function to convert a typical process into a background service (Daemon) – Version 2.

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In a previous article I had shown to you how a typical process in GNU/Linux operating systems can be converted to a background daemon process. The source code from the previous article was taken from an old project I wrote years ago. Nowadays, I have rewritten the daemonizing function in a new project and I think it could be nice to share it. I have simplified the function and now it has a clearer and simpler API.

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How to create an abstract syntax tree while parsing an input stream.

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May 25, 2014

In this article I’ll show you how you can create the abstract syntax tree (AST) of an input stream while parsing it. A parser usually reads various tokens from its input by using a lexer as a helper coroutine and tries to match various grammar rules that specify the syntax of a language (the source language).

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Techniques for resolving common grammar conflicts in parsers.

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May 17, 2014

In this article I’ll present to you some common conflicts that usually occur in Bison grammars and ways of resolving these. At first, conflicts in Bison context are situations where a sequence of input can be parsed in multiple ways according to the specified BNF grammar rules.

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How to unify similar tokens when constructing parsers and lexers.

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May 12, 2014

In this article I’ll show you how syntactically similar tokens can be handled in a unified way in order to simplify both lexical and syntactic analysis. The trick is to use one token for several similar operators in order to keep down the size of the grammar in the parser and to simplify the regular expression rules in the lexer.

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Using literal character tokens when designing lexers and parsers.

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May 11, 2014

Sometimes while I exploring the source code of various free software Flex lexers and Bison parsers I see name declarations for single character tokens.

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Implementing the “include” directive to support nested input files.

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Many programming languages and computer files have a directive, often called “include” (as well as “copy” and “import”), that causes the contents of a second file to be inserted into the original file. These included files are called copybooks or header files. They are often used to define the physical layout of program data, pieces of procedural code and/or forward declarations while promoting encapsulation and the reuse of code.

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Regular expressions for matching data values in compiler lexers.

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May 10, 2014

Below, there are some useful regular expressions for matching C-like primitive data values.

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Ignoring multiline comments with start states in compilers with Flex.

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In a previous article I have presented a way for ignoring multiline comments with an old fashion way.

In this article I’ll demonstrate a more elegant Flex-like way for ignoring multiline comments.

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A simple Flex lexer example for counting words, lines, characters.

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Below, is a simple example for counting words, lines and characters by using a Flex lexer.

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Using the Repository design pattern with AngularJS framework.

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March 2, 2014

AngularJS is really a great open-source framework for creating single page web applications (SPA) based on MVW (Model / View / Whatever) architecture. In this article, I’ll present to you how the Repository design pattern can be used in order to encapsulate into a separate layer all the underlying communication with a back-end remote system for performing CRUD operations. The example next is very simple since the user can load either a list of customers or a list of orders by clicking the appropriate link from a menu.

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How to read smoothly an average value from a jumpy or erratic input sensor.

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June 15, 2013

Below, is an Arduino function for reading smoothly an average value from a jumpy or erratic analog input sensor. The function reads repeatedly from an analog input, calculating a running average and returns the value back to the caller.

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HTML5 Geolocation simple example.

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In this article I’ll show you how you can use the HTML5 Geolocation API in order to get user’s location.

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How to transform XML into HTML5 using XSLT.

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June 3, 2013

In this article I’ll show you how you can make an XML to HTML5 transformation by using the XSLT language.

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A simple function implementation for parsing RFID Tags in Arduino.

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May 23, 2013

In this article I’ll show you how you can handle / parse the following RFID Tags from Sparkfun Electronics :

1) RFID Glass Capsule (125kHz) – Product ID: SEN-09416

2) RFID Button – 16mm (125kHz) – Product ID: SEN-09417

3) RFID Tag (125kHz) – Product ID: COM-08310

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A simple PHP function that implements email validation.

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In this article I’ll show you a simple PHP function that implements email validation.

The function performs two checks :

It checks both if the email has correct syntax and if the domain of the email exists.

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How internationalization (I18N) can be used in Qt applications.

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May 6, 2013

The Qt framework supports internationalization (I18N) and you can easily use it to your applications with a little effort. So, in this article I’ll show you how you can make it happen in a simple Qt application. The first thing you should do is making the GUI of the application translation-aware. That means setting all the texts you want of your widgets to be translatable. From the Qt Designer you can make translation-aware all your widgets. Here is an image that shows you how you can make the text of a QPushButton instance to be translation-aware :

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Ignoring multiline comments in compilers with Flex.

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May 5, 2013

In your lexer when lexical analysis is performed you may want to ignore any multiline C-like comments.

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Post your email address to the public as an image to avoid spam.

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May 4, 2013

Whenever you want to post your email address to the public and don’t want to use a Contact Form which usually hides the address, try to display the address of the email as an image in order to avoid spam.

One way to achieve this is to manually create your email address as an image and embed it to your contact page. Most of the times we want this operation to be automatically. So, I have created a simple example to show you how you can make this possible.

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LISP function for inserting the GNU GPL v3 in Emacs.

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May 1, 2013

Whenever we create a new source code file for a free software with Emacs we need first to add the short brief of the blessed GNU GPL v3. You can add a LISP function to your “~/.emacs” configuration file and call it whenever you want to add it.

If the file is missing you can create it.

After inserting the function and restarting Emacs you can call the function:

M-x insert-short-gpl (press Alt-x, type insert-short-gpl, press return).

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Remove backup files ending with “~” from your system.

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Many text editors create backup files with names ending with “~”.

Most of the times these files are annoying and unnecessary…

So, you can use the following piped commands to remove them :

find / | grep "^.*~$"
       | sed -e 's/\(^.*$\)/"\1"/g'
       | xargs rm -f > /dev/null 2>&1

Please take account that this version handles correctly also filepaths containing space characters.

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The GNU Project by Richard Stallman.

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April 25, 2012

The GNU Project by Richard Stallman
The original version was published in the book “Open Sources”

The first software-sharing community

When I started working at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab in 1971, I became part of a software-sharing community that had existed for many years. Sharing of software was not limited to our particular community; it is as old as computers, just as sharing of recipes is as old as cooking. But we did it more than most.

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Thoughts on Automatic Software Repairing and Genetic Programming.

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May 7, 2011

Thoughts on Automatic Software Repairing and Genetic Programming

In the field of Software Engineering enough emphasis is given on the development of methodologies and mechanisms for the design of optimal software systems. Moreover, the quality of a software system can be assessed by carrying out appropriate metrics. Key features under study during the evaluation of a system are reliability, stability, security, portability and usability. The quality of a software system depends mainly on the time spent, expenses made, debugging and testing techniques used etc.

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Implementation of breadth-first search algorithm in graphs.

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March 31, 2011

The following function is applied onto a graph and it specifically implements the method of breadth-first search. To visit all nodes connected to node k of a graph, we put the k in a FIFO queue and then go into a loop, during which we get the next node from the queue and, if we have not already visited it, we visit it and push into the queue all nodes belonging to the adjacency list of this node, continuing this process until we empty the queue.

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Implementation of an algorithm for creating a syntax tree.

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The following program creates the syntax tree of a mathematical expression in prefix notation. For simplicity, we assume that the terms of the expression are individual characters (digits). Each time the recursive function parse() is called, a new node is created, whose value is the next character of the expression. If the value is a term (digit), we return the new node. However, if it is an operator, we set the left and right pointers to point the tree made (recursively) for the two operands.

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Implementation of algorithms (without recursion) for preorder & level-order traversal of binary trees.

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The iterative (non-recursive) function preorderTreeTraverse() can perform preorder traversing of a binary tree with the help of a stack that can hold pointers to nodes of the tree.

Also, the iterative (non-recursive) function layerTreeTraverse() can perform level-order traversing of a binary tree with the help of a queue that can hold pointers to nodes of the tree.

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Implementation of algorithm for the calculating of prefix expressions.

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To calculate a prefix expression, we either convert a number from ASCII to decimal (in the loop ‘while’ at the end of the program) or implement the operation indicated by the first character of the expressions to the two terms, with a recursive calculation. This function is recursive, but it uses a global array containing the expression and an index number for the current character of the expression. The index number goes beyond each sub-expression calculated.

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Collection of useful recursive functions.

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The elegant recursive solution to a problem is most of the times invaluable. Although the iterative solution of that problem is likely to have a better space and time complexity, it is often preferred to use the recursive version for clarity and simplicity. It is remarkable how easily a problem can be solved by use of a recursive manner. In this article we will try to record a collection of useful recursive functions:

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Implementation of algorithm for converting an expression from infix to postfix notation.

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March 26, 2011

The following program converts an expression from infix to postfix notation. The conversion is carried out with the help of a stack. For example, to turn the expression (A + B) into the postfix form A B +, we ignore the left parenthesis, convert the A to postfix form, we store the + operator on the stack, we convert B to postfix form and then, when find the right parenthesis, we pop the + operator from the top of the stack. In particular, the following implementation works only for the addition and multiplication of integers.

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Implementation of algorithm for calculating a postfix expression.

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March 24, 2011

The following program reads any postfix expression that includes integer multiplication and addition, evaluates the expression and displays the final result on the screen. The program stores the intermediate results in a stack of integers.

The terms (operands) are pushed onto the stack. The operators are applied to the two entries at the top of the stack (the two entries are popped from the stack); the result is pushed back into the stack. Because the order in which the two pop() functions are performed in the expression of this code is not specified in C++, the code for some non-commutative operators, such as the ones for subtraction and division, would be somewhat more complicated.

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Implementation of an application for the sorting of an array of strings.

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March 8, 2011

The following program demonstrates a significant processing operation on arrays of strings. More precisely, we present the re-sorting of a set of strings in order to classify them. So, we read the strings and place them in a temporary storage area (buffer) large enough to be able to store all, keeping in an array a pointer to each string. Then we re-sort the pointers (only pointers and not strings to increase the performance) to place the pointer to the “smallest” string at the first position of the array, the pointer to the next “largest” string at the second position of the array, and so on.

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Implementation of graph representation with an adjacency list.

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The following program reads a set of edges that define a graph and creates a representation of this graph with an adjacency list. The adjacency list of a graph is an array of lists, one for each vertex, where the j-th list contains a linked list of the nodes which are connected with the j-th vertex.

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Implementation of graph representation with an adjacency matrix.

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The following program reads a set of edges that define an undirected graph and creates a representation of this graph with an adjacency matrix, giving a[i][j] and a[j][i] the value of 1 if there is an edge from i to j or from j to i in the graph, or the value of 0 if it does not exist. Also, we assume that the number of vertices V is a constant known at compilation time. Otherwise, there should be dynamic memory allocation for the array that represents the adjacency matrix.

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Implementation of string search algorithm.

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The following program finds all the occurrences of a word in a text string. We set the text string as an array of characters of fixed size (although we could, instead, use the operator ‘new’) and read it from the standard input using the function cin.get(). The memory allocation for the word entered in the command line and passed on as argument is done by the system before this program is called and we find the pointer to the string in argv[1]. For every starting position i in the array a, tries to associate the substring starting from this position with the p, checking character by character for equality. Each time we reach the end of p successfully, we display the starting position (i) of the word in the text on the screen.

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Protection of critical regions of a process in GNU/Linux.

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March 7, 2011

Below, we quote a function for managing a transaction in a hypothetical transaction management system. It is very likely multiple instances of the function to be executed in parallel on a system of symmetric multiprocessing (SMP), on multi-processor platforms or even a multithreaded single processor systems.

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Ant Colony System (Swarm Algorithm).

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March 5, 2011

Taxonomy

The Ant Colony System algorithm is an example of an Ant Colony Optimization method from the field of Swarm Intelligence, Metaheuristics and Computational Intelligence. Ant Colony System is an extension to the Ant System algorithm and is related to other Ant Colony Optimization methods such as Elite Ant System, and Rank-based Ant System.

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Cultural Algorithm (Physical Algorithm).

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Taxonomy

The Cultural Algorithm is an extension to the field of Evolutionary Computation and may be considered a Meta-Evolutionary Algorithm. It more broadly belongs to the field of Computational Intelligence and Metaheuristics. It is related to other high-order extensions of Evolutionary Computation such as the Memetic Algorithm.

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Harmony Search (Physical Algorithm).

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Taxonomy

Harmony Search belongs to the fields of Computational Intelligence and Metaheuristics.

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Simulated Annealing (Physical Algorithm).

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Taxonomy

Simulated Annealing is a global optimization algorithm that belongs to the field of Stochastic Optimization and Metaheuristics. Simulated Annealing is an adaptation of the Metropolis-Hastings Monte Carlo algorithm and is used in function optimization. Like the Genetic Algorithm, it provides a basis for a large variety of extensions and specialization’s of the general method not limited to Parallel Simulated Annealing, Fast Simulated Annealing, and Adaptive Simulated Annealing.

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Memetic Algorithm (Physical Algorithm).

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Taxonomy

Memetic Algorithms have elements of Metaheuristics and Computational Intelligence. Although they have principles of Evolutionary Algorithms, they may not strictly be considered an Evolutionary Technique. Memetic Algorithms have functional similarities to Baldwinian Evolutionary Algorithms, Lamarckian Evolutionary Algorithms, Hybrid Evolutionary Algorithms, and Cultural Algorithms. Using ideas of memes and Memetic Algorithms in optimization may be referred to as Memetic Computing.

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“Hello World” example program in assembly language.

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March 2, 2011

Probably sometime you will need to write a program in assembly language. For this reason, in this article we will develop a simple and typical executable “Hello World” program in assembly language to familiarize yourself with the process.

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Black Box Unit Testing with the QT Framework.

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Black Box testing and general testing is a key step in the iterative development methodologies (e.g. UP, XP, Agile) as it performs both the validation and verification of units in a system.

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Artificial Immune Recognition System (Immune Algorithm).

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February 12, 2011

Taxonomy

The Artificial Immune Recognition System belongs to the field of Artificial Immune Systems, and more broadly to the field of Computational Intelligence. It was extended early to the canonical version called the Artificial Immune Recognition System 2 (AIRS2) and provides the basis for extensions such as the Parallel Artificial Immune Recognition System [Watkins2004]. It is related to other Artificial Immune System algorithms such as the Dendritic Cell Algorithm, the Clonal Selection Algorithm, and the Negative Selection Algorithm.

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Self-Organizing Map (Neural Algorithm).

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The Self-Organizing Map algorithm belongs to the field of Artificial Neural Networks and Neural Computation. More broadly it belongs to the field of Computational Intelligence. The Self-Organizing Map is an unsupervised neural network that uses a competitive (winner-take-all) learning strategy. It is related to other unsupervised neural networks such as the Adaptive Resonance Theory (ART) method. It is related to other competitive learning neural networks such as the the Neural Gas Algorithm, and the Learning Vector Quantization algorithm, which is a similar algorithm for classification without connections between the neurons. Additionally, SOM is a baseline technique that has inspired many variations and extensions, not limited to the Adaptive-Subspace Self-Organizing Map (ASSOM).

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Genetic Algorithm (Evolutionary Algorithm).

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February 9, 2011

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The Genetic Algorithm is an Adaptive Strategy and a Global Optimization technique. It is an Evolutionary Algorithm and belongs to the broader study of Evolutionary Computation. The Genetic Algorithm is a sibling of other Evolutionary Algorithms such as Genetic Programming, Evolution Strategies, Evolutionary Programming, and Learning Classifier Systems. The Genetic Algorithm is a parent of a large number of variant techniques and sub-fields too numerous to list.

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Iterated Local Search (Stochastic Algorithm).

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Iterated Local Search is a Metaheuristic and a Global Optimization technique. It is an extension of Multi Start Search and may be considered a parent of many two-phase search approaches such as the Greedy Randomized Adaptive Search Procedure and Variable Neighborhood Search.

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Random Search (Stochastic Algorithm).

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Random search belongs to the fields of Stochastic Optimization and Global Optimization. Random search is a direct search method as it does not require derivatives to search a continuous domain. This base approach is related to techniques that provide small improvements such as Directed Random Search, and Adaptive Random Search.

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Adaptive Random Search (Stochastic Algorithm).

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The Adaptive Random Search algorithm belongs to the general set of approaches known as Stochastic Optimization and Global Optimization. It is a direct search method in that it does not require derivatives to navigate the search space. Adaptive Random Search is an extension of the Random Search and Localized Random Search algorithms.

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Stochastic Hill Climbing (Stochastic Algorithm).

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The Stochastic Hill Climbing algorithm is a Stochastic Optimization algorithm and is a Local Optimization algorithm (contrasted to Global Optimization). It is a direct search technique, as it does not require derivatives of the search space. Stochastic Hill Climbing is an extension of deterministic hill climbing algorithms such as Simple Hill Climbing (first-best neighbor), Steepest-Ascent Hill Climbing (best neighbor), and a parent of approaches such as Parallel Hill Climbing and Random-Restart Hill Climbing.

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Implementation of basic string processing functions in C.

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October 4, 2010

Below there are some basic processing functions of strings in C. The implementations are approached with the pointers of C, thus creating faster and more compact code.

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Implementation of insertion sort algorithm for single linked lists.

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The following program generates N random integers between 0 and 999, creates a linked list inserting a number in each node and then rearranges the nodes of the list so that the numbers appear sorted when we go through the list. For the sorting, it maintains two lists: one input list (not sorted) and one output list (sorted). In each iteration of the loop, it removes a node from the input list and enters it in the appropriate position in the output list. The code is simplified by using head nodes for each list, which contains links to the first node lists. Also, both lists (input and output) are printed.

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Implementation of closest point calculation.

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This program demonstrates the use of an array and is representative of the usual situation in which we store data in one array to process them later. It counts the number of pairs of N randomly generated points of the unit square, which can be connected to a line segment of length less than ‘d’, using the point data type. Because the execution time of this program is O(n2), it can’t be used for large N.

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Implement simple reverse list iteratively.

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October 2, 2010

The function ‘reverse’ in the following example reverses the links in a list, returning a pointer to the end node, which then shows the next of the last node, and so forth, while the link to the first node of the initial list is assigned the value 0 corresponding to null pointer (in C++). To accomplish this task, we must maintain links to three consecutive nodes in the list.

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Implementation of a circular list for solving the problem of Josephus.

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For the representation of individuals arranged in a circle, we create a circular linked list with a combination of each person to the person on his left in the circle. The integer i represents the i-th person in the circle. After you create a circular list of one node for 1, we insert its unique node to nodes 2 to N. We end up with a cycle from 1 to N, with x indicating the node N. Then, starting from 1 we omit M-1 nodes, we define the pointer of the (M-1)-th node to omit the M-th, and continue that way until only one node remains in the list.

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Implementation of algorithm for finding primes with the sieve of Eratosthenes.

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The aim of this program is to assign to a[i] the value 1 if i is a prime number and the value 0 if not. Initially, all elements of the array take the value 1 to indicate that there are no numbers which are known not to be prime. Then all elements of the array corresponding to indexes that are known not to be primes (multiples of known primes) take the value 0. If a[i] has the value 1 even after all multiples of smaller primes have taken the value 0, we know that i is a prime number.

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Implementation of algorithm for the simulation of the ‘twisting’ of a coin.

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The program generally simulates a Bernoulli trials sequence, a familiar and abstract notion of probability theory. So, if you flip a coin N times, we expect “head” to occur N/2 times – but it could occur anything between 0 and N times. The program performs the experiment M times, reading the N and M from the command line. It uses an array ‘f’ to count the frequency with which the result “i heads” appears for 0 <= i <= N, and then displays a histogram of the results of experiments with an asterisk for every 10 appearances. Also, the operation behind the program – of indexing an array with a calculated value – is critical to the effectiveness of many computational procedures.

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Implementation of sequential and binary search (iterative version).

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September 29, 2010

Sequential Search.

This algorithm checks whether the number ‘v’ is contained in a set of numbers already stored in the data a[0], a[1], …, a[r-1] of the array ‘a’ (where ‘r’ the number of elements in it), comparing it sequentially with all numbers, starting from the beginning. If the check reaches the end without finding the number, the value -1 is returned. Otherwise, we are returned the index of the position of the one-dimensional array containing the number.

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Solving the problem of connectivity with the weighted quick-union algorithm with path compression by halving.

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September 28, 2010

If we replace the loops ‘for’ of the simple version of weighted quick-union (you’ll find it in a previous article) with the following code, we reduce the length of each route passing to the half. The end result of this change is that after a long sequence of operations the trees end up almost level.

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Solving the problem of connectivity with the quick-find algorithm.

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This program reads from the standard input a sequence of pairs of non-negative integers which are less than N (interpreting the pair [p q] as a “link of the object p to object q”) and displays the pairs that represent those objects which are not yet connected. The program complies with the array ‘id’ to include an entry for each object and applies that id[q] and id[p] are equal if and only if p and q are connected.

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Solving the problem of connectivity with the quick-union algorithm.

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If we replace the body of the while loop of the quick-find algorithm (you can find it in a previous article) with the following code we have a program that meets the same specifications as the quick-find algorithm but performs fewer calculations for the act of union, to the expense of more calculations for act of finding. The ‘for’ loop and the ‘if’ operation that follows in this code determine the necessary and sufficient conditions in the array ‘id’ that p and q be linked. The act of union is implemented by the assignment id[i] = j.

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Solving the problem of connectivity with the weighted quick-union algorithm.

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This program is a modification of the simple quick-union algorithm (you’ll find it in a previous article). It uses an extra array ‘sz’ to store the number of nodes for each object with id[i] == i in the corresponding “tree”, so the act of union to be able to connect the smaller of the two specified “trees” with the largest, and thus avoid the formation of large paths in “trees”.

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Free source code documentation systems for applications.

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September 9, 2010

In this article, I quote a personal documentation implementation of the source code of the application “GNU Find String” using the Doxygen system. The source code of the application is written in ANSI C. You’ll find the documentation here: Doxygen documentation of the source code of the application “GNU Find String”.

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Input function as a possible scenario for reproducing non-deterministic errors with defensive programming.

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July 16, 2010

The presence of errors in software development (and not only) is inevitable. However, over time the programs improve and tend to perfection through various techniques and methods we have developed.

The deterministic problems are easy to spot because they always lead to the same error. There are tools that run through the source code of an application to find possible deterministic errors (these tools are especially useful in applications written with scripting languages such as Python, Bash Scripting, etc).

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Implementation of a C function to convert a typical process into a background service (Daemon) – Version 1.

Filed under: Articles, Operating Systems — 2 Comments
July 15, 2010

Below I quote a function in C to convert a standard Linux kernel process into background service (Daemon Service). If you wish to develop a server to provide services, it may be helpful. Although there are several manuals on the Internet on how to create background services, most of them don’t show a complete example, while others are barely functioning. The following function converts a standard process into a service taking everything you need into account. Also, this function is the result of a combination of several textbooks and numerous studies about this issue. Finally, it has been tested on personal applications servers and it is performing well.

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Implementation of functions in C for software signal management in POSIX operating systems – Version 1.

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Below I quote a simple implementation in C that you can use in your applications for the management of software signals in POSIX operating systems (such as the GNU/Linux). Of course, this implementation comes from a personal project of the past, especially where I grappled with system programming. You can modify this implementation to work best with your needs.

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Function implementation to generate true random numbers from the Linux kernel.

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Before I mention the function that I have developed for the production of random numbers from the monolithic Linux kernel, I would first like to say something about the issue of random numbers.

The issue of producing truly random numbers is important and had even since the beginning puzzled computer scientists. In mathematics, it is very difficult to define the random and, generally, randomness is very difficult to prove with no assumptions. In the past, many scientists tried to develop mathematical models and algorithms to develop random number generators.

One of the greatest scientists of Computer Science, John von Neumann (the basic idea of the architecture of all computer systems today was his own design) jokingly said: ‘Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin.’.

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Embedded systems RAM integrity check with C.

Filed under: Articles, Embedded Systems — 2 Comments
July 12, 2010

Below I quote a program in C which performs memory test in a computer system (for example the BIOS performs a memory test before loading the operating system loader in any IBM PC). However, what we quote is different in its implementation. If you are dealing with embedded systems or operating systems programming it may be useful.

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Portable and Abstract version for storing settings in QT applications.

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July 11, 2010

The QT provides an adorable way to store the settings of a program with a GUI (and not only) by means of the QSettings library. Below, we quote a personal version of the project ‘parkman‘ (Parking Manager).

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