Search Results

Search found 90546 results on 3622 pages for 'code optimization'.

Page 64/3622 | < Previous Page | 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71  | Next Page >

• C++ refactor common code with one different statement

  - by user231536

  I have two methods f(vector<int>& x, ....) and g(DBConn& x, ....) where the (....) parameters are all identical. The code inside the two methods are completely identical except for one statement where we do different actions based on the type of x: in f(): we do x.push_back(i) in g(): we do x.DeleteRow(i) What is the simplest way to extract the common code into one method and yet have the two different statements? I am thinking of having a templated functor that overloads operator () (int a) but that seems overkill.

  Read the article

• Code Golf: Duplicate Character Removal in String

  - by Alex

  The challenge: The shortest code, by character count, that detects and removes duplicate characters in a String. Removal includes ALL instances of the duplicated character (so if you find 3 n's, all three have to go), and original character order needs to be preserved. Example Input 1: nbHHkRvrXbvkn Example Output 1: RrX Example Input 2: nbHHkRbvnrXbvkn Example Output 2: RrX (the second example removes letters that occur three times; some solutions have failed to account for this) (This is based on my other question where I needed the fastest way to do this in C#, but I think it makes good Code Golf across languages.)

  Read the article

• Help me understand the code snippet in c#

  - by Benny

  I am reading this blog: Pipes and filters pattern I am confused by this code snippet: public class Pipeline<T> { private readonly List<IOperation<T>> operations = new List<IOperation<T>>(); public Pipeline<T> Register(IOperation<T> operation) { operations.Add(operation); return this; } public void Execute() { IEnumerable<T> current = new List<T>(); foreach (IOperation<T> operation in operations) { current = operation.Execute(current); } IEnumerator<T> enumerator = current.GetEnumerator(); while (enumerator.MoveNext()); } } what is the purpose of this statement: while (enumerator.MoveNext());? seems this code is a noop.

  Read the article

• Using Gridview in aspx.vb (code-behind)

  - by Tauron Xavenberg

  I need to create a gridview based on 2 different datasources: main and sub-cathegory. And I need to list them like below: Productinfo sub-product 1 sub-product 2 Productinfo sub-product 1 sub-product 2 sub-product 3 sub-product 4 Etc... the thing is that both the "productinfo" and the "sub-product" are dynamic as the number of both can vary, so I would have to create a gridview within a gridview, plus the necessary filters too. For this reason I thought it was best to do it all in code-behind, but I can't understand how to use the gridview-class in codebehind and bind it so that it actually shows something in the main aspx page. Basically what I'm asking for is a simple example of how, when you have nothing but <asp:GridView/> in the aspx -page, can you add components to it and show it, from code-behind (vb)? Thanks.

  Read the article

• Add code to html pages automatically

  - by piede

  I need to add some code to the of several html contained in a folder on my desktop. How can i do that? I am using a prototyping tool (Axure) on Mac and I want to add some html meta tags to the generated pages. These pages can be overwritten every time I generate the prototype. What I need is a sort of script that I can launch after re-generating the prototype, to reinsert the code. There is something for windows but it doesn't work on Mac: http://joshuamorse.com/2009/01/14/axure-protonotes-an-alternative-to-protoshare/ thanks

  Read the article

• Wpf. Chart optimization. More than million points

  - by Evgeny

  I have custom control - chart with size, for example, 300x300 pixels and more than one million points (maybe less) in it. And its clear that now he works very slowly. I am searching for algoritm which will show only few points with minimal visual difference. I have link to component which have functionallity exactly what i need (2 million points demo): http://www.mindscape.co.nz/demo/SilverlightElements/demopage.html#/ChartOverviewPage I will be grateful for any matherials, links or thoughts how to realize such functionallity.

  Read the article

• SQL SERVER – Out of the Box – Activty and Performance Reports from SSSMS

  - by pinaldave

  SQL Server management Studio 2008 is wonderful tool and has many different features. Many times, an average user does not use them as they are not aware about these features. Today, we will learn one such feature. SSMS comes with many inbuilt performance and activity reports, but we do not use it to the full potential. Let us see how we can access these standard reports. Connect to SQL Server Node >> Right Click on it >> Go to Reports >> Click on Standard Reports >> Pick Any Report. Click to Enlarge You can see there are many reports, which an average users needs right away, are available there. Let me list all the reports available. Server Dashboard Configuration Changes History Schema Changes History Scheduler Health Memory Consumption Activity – All Blocking Transactions Activity – All Cursors Activity – All Sessions Activity – Top Sessions Activity – Dormant Sessions Activity -  Top Connections Top Transactions by Age Top Transactions by Blocked Transactions Count Top Transactions by Locks Count Performance – Batch Execution Statistics Performance – Object Execution Statistics Performance – Top Queries by Average CPU Time Performance – Top Queries by Average IO Performance – Top Queries by Total CPU Time Performance – Top Queries by Total IO Service Broker Statistics Transactions Log Shipping Status In fact, when you look at the above list, it is fairly clear that they are very thought out and commonly needed reports that are available in SQL Server 2008. Let us run a couple of reports and observe their result. Performance – Top Queries by Total CPU Time Click to Enlarge Memory Consumption Click to Enlarge There are options for custom reports as well, which we can configure. We will learn about them in some other post. Additionally, you can right click on the reports and export in Excel or PDF. I think this tool can really help those who are just looking for some quick details. Does any of you use this feature, or this feature has some limitations and You would like to see more features? Reference : Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Optimization, SQL Performance, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Server Management Studio, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

  Read the article

• SQL SERVER – Summary of Month – Wait Type – Day 28 of 28

  - by pinaldave

  I am glad to announce that the month of Wait Types and Queues very successful. I am glad that it was very well received and there was great amount of participation from community. I am fortunate to have some of the excellent comments throughout the series. I want to dedicate this series to all the guest blogger – Jonathan, Jacob, Glenn, and Feodor for their kindness to take a participation in this series. Here is the complete list of the blog posts in this series. I enjoyed writing the series and I plan to continue writing similar series. Please offer your opinion. SQL SERVER – Introduction to Wait Stats and Wait Types – Wait Type – Day 1 of 28 SQL SERVER – Signal Wait Time Introduction with Simple Example – Wait Type – Day 2 of 28 SQL SERVER – DMV – sys.dm_os_wait_stats Explanation – Wait Type – Day 3 of 28 SQL SERVER – DMV – sys.dm_os_waiting_tasks and sys.dm_exec_requests – Wait Type – Day 4 of 28 SQL SERVER – Capturing Wait Types and Wait Stats Information at Interval – Wait Type – Day 5 of 28 SQL SERVER – CXPACKET – Parallelism – Usual Solution – Wait Type – Day 6 of 28 SQL SERVER – CXPACKET – Parallelism – Advanced Solution – Wait Type – Day 7 of 28 SQL SERVER – SOS_SCHEDULER_YIELD – Wait Type – Day 8 of 28 SQL SERVER – PAGEIOLATCH_DT, PAGEIOLATCH_EX, PAGEIOLATCH_KP, PAGEIOLATCH_SH, PAGEIOLATCH_UP – Wait Type – Day 9 of 28 SQL SERVER – IO_COMPLETION – Wait Type – Day 10 of 28 SQL SERVER – ASYNC_IO_COMPLETION – Wait Type – Day 11 of 28 SQL SERVER – PAGELATCH_DT, PAGELATCH_EX, PAGELATCH_KP, PAGELATCH_SH, PAGELATCH_UP – Wait Type – Day 12 of 28 SQL SERVER – FT_IFTS_SCHEDULER_IDLE_WAIT – Full Text – Wait Type – Day 13 of 28 SQL SERVER – BACKUPIO, BACKUPBUFFER – Wait Type – Day 14 of 28 SQL SERVER – LCK_M_XXX – Wait Type – Day 15 of 28 SQL SERVER – Guest Post – Jonathan Kehayias – Wait Type – Day 16 of 28 SQL SERVER – WRITELOG – Wait Type – Day 17 of 28 SQL SERVER – LOGBUFFER – Wait Type – Day 18 of 28 SQL SERVER – PREEMPTIVE and Non-PREEMPTIVE – Wait Type – Day 19 of 28 SQL SERVER – MSQL_XP – Wait Type – Day 20 of 28 SQL SERVER – Guest Posts – Feodor Georgiev – The Context of Our Database Environment – Going Beyond the Internal SQL Server Waits – Wait Type – Day 21 of 28 SQL SERVER – Guest Post – Jacob Sebastian – Filestream – Wait Types – Wait Queues – Day 22 of 28 SQL SERVER – OLEDB – Link Server – Wait Type – Day 23 of 28 SQL SERVER – 2000 – DBCC SQLPERF(waitstats) – Wait Type – Day 24 of 28 SQL SERVER – 2011 – Wait Type – Day 25 of 28 SQL SERVER – Guest Post – Glenn Berry – Wait Type – Day 26 of 28 SQL SERVER – Best Reference – Wait Type – Day 27 of 28 SQL SERVER – Summary of Month – Wait Type – Day 28 of 28 Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Optimization, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Wait Stats, SQL Wait Types, SQLServer, T SQL, Technology

  Read the article

• SQL SERVER – Difference Between DATETIME and DATETIME2

  - by pinaldave

  Yesterday I have written a very quick blog post on SQL SERVER – Difference Between GETDATE and SYSDATETIME and I got tremendous response for the same. I suggest you read that blog post before continuing this blog post today. I had asked people to honestly take part and share their view about above two system function. There are few emails as well few comments on the blog post asking question how did I come to know the difference between the same. The answer is real world issues. I was called in for performance tuning consultancy where I was asked very strange question by one developer. Here is the situation he was facing. System had a single table with two different column of datetime. One column was datelastmodified and second column was datefirstmodified. One of the column was DATETIME and another was DATETIME2. Developer was populating them with SYSDATETIME respectively. He was always thinking that the value inserted in the table will be the same. This table was only accessed by INSERT statement and there was no updates done over it in application.One fine day he ran distinct on both of this column and was in for surprise. He always thought that both of the table will have same data, but in fact they had very different data. He presented this scenario to me. I said this can not be possible but when looked at the resultset, I had to agree with him. Here is the simple script generated to demonstrate the problem he was facing. This is just a sample of original table. DECLARE @Intveral INT SET @Intveral = 10000 CREATE TABLE #TimeTable (FirstDate DATETIME, LastDate DATETIME2) WHILE (@Intveral > 0) BEGIN INSERT #TimeTable (FirstDate, LastDate) VALUES (SYSDATETIME(), SYSDATETIME()) SET @Intveral = @Intveral - 1 END GO SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT FirstDate) D_GETDATE, COUNT(DISTINCT LastDate) D_SYSGETDATE FROM #TimeTable GO SELECT DISTINCT a.FirstDate, b.LastDate FROM #TimeTable a INNER JOIN #TimeTable b ON a.FirstDate = b.LastDate GO SELECT * FROM #TimeTable GO DROP TABLE #TimeTable GO Let us see the resultset. You can clearly see from result that SYSDATETIME() does not populate the same value in the both of the field. In fact the value is either rounded down or rounded up in the field which is DATETIME. Event though we are populating the same value, the values are totally different in both the column resulting the SELF JOIN fail and display different DISTINCT values. The best policy is if you are using DATETIME use GETDATE() and if you are suing DATETIME2 use SYSDATETIME() to populate them with current date and time to accurately address the precision. As DATETIME2 is introduced in SQL Server 2008, above script will only work with SQL SErver 2008 and later versions. I hope I have answered few questions asked yesterday. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://www.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL DateTime, SQL Optimization, SQL Performance, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

  Read the article

• SQL SERVER – Index Created on View not Used Often – Observation of the View – Part 2

  - by pinaldave

  Earlier, I have written an article about SQL SERVER – Index Created on View not Used Often – Observation of the View. I received an email from one of the readers, asking if there would no problems when we create the Index on the base table. Well, we need to discuss this situation in two different cases. Before proceeding to the discussion, I strongly suggest you read my earlier articles. To avoid the duplication, I am not going to repeat the code and explanation over here. In all the earlier cases, I have explained in detail how Index created on the View is not utilized. SQL SERVER – Index Created on View not Used Often – Limitation of the View 12 SQL SERVER – Index Created on View not Used Often – Observation of the View SQL SERVER – Indexed View always Use Index on Table As per earlier blog posts, so far we have done the following: Create a Table Create a View Create Index On View Write SELECT with ORDER BY on View However, the blog reader who emailed me suggests the extension of the said logic, which is as follows: Create a Table Create a View Create Index On View Write SELECT with ORDER BY on View Create Index on the Base Table Write SELECT with ORDER BY on View After doing the last two steps, the question is “Will the query on the View utilize the Index on the View, or will it still use the Index of the base table?“ Let us first run the Create example. USE tempdb GO IF EXISTS (SELECT * FROM sys.views WHERE OBJECT_ID = OBJECT_ID(N'[dbo].[SampleView]')) DROP VIEW [dbo].[SampleView] GO IF EXISTS (SELECT * FROM sys.objects WHERE OBJECT_ID = OBJECT_ID(N'[dbo].[mySampleTable]') AND TYPE IN (N'U')) DROP TABLE [dbo].[mySampleTable] GO -- Create SampleTable CREATE TABLE mySampleTable (ID1 INT, ID2 INT, SomeData VARCHAR(100)) INSERT INTO mySampleTable (ID1,ID2,SomeData) SELECT TOP 100000 ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY o1.name), ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY o2.name), o2.name FROM sys.all_objects o1 CROSS JOIN sys.all_objects o2 GO -- Create View CREATE VIEW SampleView WITH SCHEMABINDING AS SELECT ID1,ID2,SomeData FROM dbo.mySampleTable GO -- Create Index on View CREATE UNIQUE CLUSTERED INDEX [IX_ViewSample] ON [dbo].[SampleView] ( ID2 ASC ) GO -- Select from view SELECT ID1,ID2,SomeData FROM SampleView ORDER BY ID2 GO -- Create Index on Original Table -- On Column ID1 CREATE UNIQUE CLUSTERED INDEX [IX_OriginalTable] ON mySampleTable ( ID1 ASC ) GO -- On Column ID2 CREATE UNIQUE NONCLUSTERED INDEX [IX_OriginalTable_ID2] ON mySampleTable ( ID2 ) GO -- Select from view SELECT ID1,ID2,SomeData FROM SampleView ORDER BY ID2 GO Now let us see the execution plans for both of the SELECT statement. Before Index on Base Table (with Index on View): After Index on Base Table (with Index on View): Looking at both executions, it is very clear that with or without, the View is using Indexes. Alright, I have written 11 disadvantages of the Views. Now I have written one case where the View is using Indexes. Anybody who says that I am being harsh on Views can say now that I found one place where Index on View can be helpful. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Optimization, SQL Performance, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL View, SQLServer, T SQL, Technology

  Read the article

• SQL SERVER – Index Created on View not Used Often – Observation of the View

  - by pinaldave

  I always enjoy writing about concepts on Views. Views are frequently used concepts, and so it’s not surprising that I have seen so many misconceptions about this subject. To clear such misconceptions, I have previously written the article SQL SERVER – The Limitations of the Views – Eleven and more…. I also wrote a follow up article wherein I demonstrated that without even creating index on the basic table, the query on the View will not use the View. You can read about this demonstration over here: SQL SERVER – Index Created on View not Used Often – Limitation of the View 12. I promised in that post that I would also write an article where I would demonstrate the condition where the Index will be used. I got many responses suggesting that I can do that with using NOEXPAND; I agree. I have already written about this in my original summary article. Here is a way for you to see how Index created on View can be utilized. We will do the following steps on this exercise: Create a Table Create a View Create Index On View Write SELECT with ORDER BY on View USE tempdb GO IF EXISTS (SELECT * FROM sys.views WHERE OBJECT_ID = OBJECT_ID(N'[dbo].[SampleView]')) DROP VIEW [dbo].[SampleView] GO IF EXISTS (SELECT * FROM sys.objects WHERE OBJECT_ID = OBJECT_ID(N'[dbo].[mySampleTable]') AND TYPE IN (N'U')) DROP TABLE [dbo].[mySampleTable] GO -- Create SampleTable CREATE TABLE mySampleTable (ID1 INT, ID2 INT, SomeData VARCHAR(100)) INSERT INTO mySampleTable (ID1,ID2,SomeData) SELECT TOP 100000 ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY o1.name), ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY o2.name), o2.name FROM sys.all_objects o1 CROSS JOIN sys.all_objects o2 GO -- Create View CREATE VIEW SampleView WITH SCHEMABINDING AS SELECT ID1,ID2,SomeData FROM dbo.mySampleTable GO -- Create Index on View CREATE UNIQUE CLUSTERED INDEX [IX_ViewSample] ON [dbo].[SampleView] ( ID2 ASC ) GO -- Select from view SELECT ID1,ID2,SomeData FROM SampleView ORDER BY ID2 GO When we check the execution plan for this , we find it clearly that the Index created on the View is utilized. ORDER BY clause uses the Index created on the View. I hope this makes the puzzle simpler on how the Index is used on the View. Again, I strongly recommend reading my earlier series about the limitations of the Views found here: SQL SERVER – The Limitations of the Views – Eleven and more…. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Optimization, SQL Performance, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL View, T SQL, Technology

  Read the article

• SQL SERVER – DMV – sys.dm_exec_query_optimizer_info – Statistics of Optimizer

  - by pinaldave

  Incredibly, SQL Server has so much information to share with us. Every single day, I am amazed with this SQL Server technology. Sometimes I find several interesting information by just querying few of the DMV. And when I present this info in front of my client during performance tuning consultancy, they are surprised with my findings. Today, I am going to share one of the hidden gems of DMV with you, the one which I frequently use to understand what’s going on under the hood of SQL Server. SQL Server keeps the record of most of the operations of the Query Optimizer. We can learn many interesting details about the optimizer which can be utilized to improve the performance of server. SELECT * FROM sys.dm_exec_query_optimizer_info WHERE counter IN ('optimizations', 'elapsed time','final cost', 'insert stmt','delete stmt','update stmt', 'merge stmt','contains subquery','tables', 'hints','order hint','join hint', 'view reference','remote query','maximum DOP', 'maximum recursion level','indexed views loaded', 'indexed views matched','indexed views used', 'indexed views updated','dynamic cursor request', 'fast forward cursor request') All occurrence values are cumulative and are set to 0 at system restart. All values for value fields are set to NULL at system restart. I have removed a few of the internal counters from the script above, and kept only documented details. Let us check the result of the above query. As you can see, there is so much vital information that is revealed in above query. I can easily say so many things about how many times Optimizer was triggered and what the average time taken by it to optimize my queries was. Additionally, I can also determine how many times update, insert or delete statements were optimized. I was able to quickly figure out that my client was overusing the Query Hints using this dynamic management view. If you have been reading my blog, I am sure you are aware of my series related to SQL Server Views SQL SERVER – The Limitations of the Views – Eleven and more…. With this, I can take a quick look and figure out how many times Views were used in various solutions within the query. Moreover, you can easily know what fraction of the optimizations has been involved in tuning server. For example, the following query would tell me, in total optimizations, what the fraction of time View was “reference“. As this View also includes system Views and DMVs, the number is a bit higher on my machine. SELECT (SELECT CAST (occurrence AS FLOAT) FROM sys.dm_exec_query_optimizer_info WHERE counter = 'view reference') / (SELECT CAST (occurrence AS FLOAT) FROM sys.dm_exec_query_optimizer_info WHERE counter = 'optimizations') AS ViewReferencedFraction Reference : Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL DMV, SQL Optimization, SQL Performance, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLServer, T SQL, Technology

  Read the article

• SQL SERVER – Public Training and Private Training – Differences and Similarities

  - by pinaldave

  Earlier this year, I was on Road SQL Server Seminars. I did many SQL Server Performance Trainings and SQL Server Performance Consultations throughout the year but I feel the most rewarding exercise is always the one when instructor learns something from students, too. I was just talking to my wife, Nupur – she manages my logistics and administration related activities – and she pointed out that this year I have done 62% consultations and 38% trainings. I was bit surprised as I thought the numbers would be reversed. Every time I review the year, I think of training done at organizations. Well, I cannot argue with reality, I have done more consultations (some would call them projects) than training. I told my wife that I enjoy consultations more than training. She promptly asked me a question which was not directly related but made me think for long time, and in the end resulted in this blog post. Nupur asked me: what do I enjoy the most, public training or private training? I had a long conversation with her on this subject. I am not going to write long blog post which can change your life here. This is rather a small post condensing my one hour discussion into 200 words. Public Training is fun because… There are lots of different kinds of attendees There are always vivid questions Lots of questions on questions Less interest in theory and more interest in demos Good opportunity of future business Private Training is fun because… There is a focused interest One question is discussed deeply because of existing company issues More interest in “how it happened” concepts – under the hood operations Good connection with attendees This is also a good opportunity of future business Here I will stop my monologue and I want to open up this question to all of you: Question to Attendees - Which one do you enjoy the most – Public Training or Private Training? Question to Trainers - What do you enjoy the most – Public Training or Private Training? Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Optimization, SQL Performance, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Training, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology

  Read the article

• Correct way to handle path-finding collision matrix

  - by Xander Lamkins

  Here is an example of me utilizing path finding. The red grid represents the grid utilized by my A* library to locate a distance. This picture is only an example, currently it is all calculated on the 1x1 pixel level (pretty darn laggy). I want to make it so that the farther I click, the less accurate it will be (split the map into larger grid pieces). Edit: as mentioned by Eric, this is not a required game mechanic. I am perfectly fine with any method that allows me to make this accurate while still fast. This isn't the really the topic of this question though. The problem I have is, my current library uses a two dimensional grid of integers. The higher the number in a cell, the more resistance for that grid tile. Currently I'm setting all unwalkable spots to Integer Max. Here is an example of what I want: I'm just not sure how I should set up the arrays of integers of the grid. Every time an element is added/removed to/from the game, it's collision details are updated in the table. Here is a picture of what the map looks like on my collision layer: I probably shouldn't be creating new arrays every time I have to do a path find because my game needs to support tons of PF at the same time. Should I have multiple arrays that are all updated when the dynamic elements are updated (a building is built/a building is destroyed). The problem I see with this is that it will probably make the creation and destruction of buildings a little more laggy than I would want because it would be setting the collision grid for each built in accuracy level. I would also have to add more/remove some arrays if I ever in the future changed the map size. Should I generate the new array based on an accuracy value every time I need to PF? The problem I see with this is that it will probably make any form of PF just as laggy because it will have to search through a MapWidth x MapHeight number of cells to shrink it all down. Or is there a better way? I'm certainly not the best at optimizing really anything. I've just started dealing with XNA so I'm not used to having optimization code really doing much of an affect until now... :( If you need code examples, please ask. I'll add it as an edit. EDIT: While this doesn't directly relate to the question, I figure the more information I provide, the better. To keep your units from moving as accurately to the players desired position, I've decided that once the unit PFs over to the less accurate grid piece, it will then PF on a more accurate level to the exact position requested.

  Read the article

• A Simple Approach For Presenting With Code Samples

  - by Jesse Taber

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/GruffCode/archive/2013/07/31/a-simple-approach-for-presenting-with-code-samples.aspxI’ve been getting ready for a presentation and have been struggling a bit with the best way to show and execute code samples. I don’t present often (hardly ever), but when I do I like the presentation to have a lot of succinct and executable code snippets to help illustrate the points that I’m making. Depending on what the presentation is about, I might just want to build an entire sample application that I would run during the presentation. In other cases, however, building a full-blown application might not really be the best way to present the code. The presentation I’m working on now is for an open source utility library for dealing with dates and times. I could have probably cooked up a sample app for accepting date and time input and then contrived ways in which it could put the library through its paces, but I had trouble coming up with one app that would illustrate all of the various features of the library that I wanted to highlight. I finally decided that what I really needed was an approach that met the following criteria: Simple: I didn’t want the user interface or overall architecture of a sample application to serve as a distraction from the demonstration of the syntax of the library that the presentation is about. I want to be able to present small bits of code that are focused on accomplishing a single task. Several of these examples will look similar, and that’s OK. I want each sample to “stand on its own” and not rely much on external classes or methods (other than the library that is being presented, of course). “Debuggable” (not really a word, I know): I want to be able to easily run the sample with the debugger attached in Visual Studio should I want to step through any bits of code and show what certain values might be at run time. As far as I know this rules out something like LinqPad, though using LinqPad to present code samples like this is actually a very interesting idea that I might explore another time. Flexible and Selectable: I’m going to have lots of code samples to show, and I want to be able to just package them all up into a single project or module and have an easy way to just run the sample that I want on-demand. Since I’m presenting on a .NET framework library, one of the simplest ways in which I could execute some code samples would be to just create a Console application and use Console.WriteLine to output the pertinent info at run time. This gives me a “no frills” harness from which to run my code samples, and I just hit ‘F5’ to run it with the debugger. This satisfies numbers 1 and 2 from my list of criteria above, but item 3 is a little harder. By default, just running a console application is going to execute the ‘main’ method, and then terminate the program after all code is executed. If I want to have several different code samples and run them one at a time, it would be cumbersome to keep swapping the code I want in and out of the ‘main’ method of the console application. What I really want is an easy way to keep the console app running throughout the whole presentation and just have it run the samples I want when I want. I could setup a simple Windows Forms or WPF desktop application with buttons for the different samples, but then I’m getting away from my first criteria of keeping things as simple as possible. Infinite Loops To The Rescue I found a way to have a simple console application satisfy all three of my requirements above, and it involves using an infinite loop and some Console.ReadLine calls that will give the user an opportunity to break out and exit the program. (All programs that need to run until they are closed explicitly (or crash!) likely use similar constructs behind the scenes. Create a new Windows Forms project, look in the ‘Program.cs’ that gets generated, and then check out the docs for the Application.Run method that it calls.). Here’s how the main method might look: 1: static void Main(string[] args) 2: { 3: do 4: { 5: Console.Write("Enter command or 'exit' to quit: > "); 6: var command = Console.ReadLine(); 7: if ((command ?? string.Empty).Equals("exit", StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase)) 8: { 9: Console.WriteLine("Quitting."); 10: break; 11: } 12: 13: } while (true); 14: } The idea here is the app prompts me for the command I want to run, or I can type in ‘exit’ to break out of the loop and let the application close. The only trick now is to create a set of commands that map to each of the code samples that I’m going to want to run. Each sample is already encapsulated in a single public method in a separate class, so I could just write a big switch statement or create a hashtable/dictionary that maps command text to an Action that will invoke the proper method, but why re-invent the wheel? CLAP For Your Own Presentation I’ve blogged about the CLAP library before, and it turns out that it’s a great fit for satisfying criteria #3 from my list above. CLAP lets you decorate methods in a class with an attribute and then easily invoke those methods from within a console application. CLAP was designed to take the arguments passed into the console app from the command line and parse them to determine which method to run and what arguments to pass to that method, but there’s no reason you can’t re-purpose it to accept command input from within the infinite loop defined above and invoke the corresponding method. Here’s how you might define a couple of different methods to contain two different code samples that you want to run during your presentation: 1: public static class CodeSamples 2: { 3: [Verb(Aliases="one")] 4: public static void SampleOne() 5: { 6: Console.WriteLine("This is sample 1"); 7: } 8:   9: [Verb(Aliases="two")] 10: public static void SampleTwo() 11: { 12: Console.WriteLine("This is sample 2"); 13: } 14: } A couple of things to note about the sample above: I’m using static methods. You don’t actually need to use static methods with CLAP, but the syntax ends up being a bit simpler and static methods happen to lend themselves well to the “one self-contained method per code sample” approach that I want to use. The methods are decorated with a ‘Verb’ attribute. This tells CLAP that they are eligible targets for commands. The “Aliases” argument lets me give them short and easy-to-remember aliases that can be used to invoke them. By default, CLAP just uses the full method name as the command name, but with aliases you can simply the usage a bit. I’m not using any parameters. CLAP’s main feature is its ability to parse out arguments from a command line invocation of a console application and automatically pass them in as parameters to the target methods. My code samples don’t need parameters ,and honestly having them would complicate giving the presentation, so this is a good thing. You could use this same approach to invoke methods with parameters, but you’d have a couple of things to figure out. When you invoke a .NET application from the command line, Windows will parse the arguments and pass them in as a string array (called ‘args’ in the boilerplate console project Program.cs). The parsing that gets done here is smart enough to deal with things like treating strings in double quotes as one argument, and you’d have to re-create that within your infinite loop if you wanted to use parameters. I plan on either submitting a pull request to CLAP to add this capability or maybe just making a small utility class/extension method to do it and posting that here in the future. So I now have a simple class with static methods to contain my code samples, and an infinite loop in my ‘main’ method that can accept text commands. Wiring this all up together is pretty easy: 1: static void Main(string[] args) 2: { 3: do 4: { 5: try 6: { 7: Console.Write("Enter command or 'exit' to quit: > "); 8: var command = Console.ReadLine(); 9: if ((command ?? string.Empty).Equals("exit", StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase)) 10: { 11: Console.WriteLine("Quitting."); 12: break; 13: } 14:   15: Parser.Run<CodeSamples>(new[] { command }); 16: Console.WriteLine("---------------------------------------------------------"); 17: } 18: catch (Exception ex) 19: { 20: Console.Error.WriteLine("Error: " + ex.Message); 21: } 22:   23: } while (true); 24: } Note that I’m now passing the ‘CodeSamples’ class into the CLAP ‘Parser.Run’ as a type argument. This tells CLAP to inspect that class for methods that might be able to handle the commands passed in. I’m also throwing in a little “----“ style line separator and some basic error handling (because I happen to know that some of the samples are going to throw exceptions for demonstration purposes) and I’m good to go. Now during my presentation I can just have the console application running the whole time with the debugger attached and just type in the alias of the code sample method that I want to run when I want to run it.

  Read the article

• .NET Code Evolution

  - by Alois Kraus

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/akraus1/archive/2013/07/24/153504.aspxAt my day job I do look at a lot of code written by other people. Most of the code is quite good and some is even a masterpiece. And there is also code which makes you think WTF… oh it was written by me. Hm not so bad after all. There are many excuses reasons for bad code. Most often it is time pressure followed by not enough ambition (who cares) or insufficient training. Normally I do care about code quality quite a lot which makes me a (perceived) slow worker who does write many tests and refines the code quite a lot because of the design deficiencies. Most of the deficiencies I do find by putting my design under stress while checking for invariants. It does also help a lot to step into the code with a debugger (sometimes also Windbg). I do this much more often when my tests are red. That way I do get a much better understanding what my code really does and not what I think it should be doing. This time I do want to show you how code can evolve over the years with different .NET Framework versions. Once there was  time where .NET 1.1 was new and many C++ programmers did switch over to get rid of not initialized pointers and memory leaks. There were also nice new data structures available such as the Hashtable which is fast lookup table with O(1) time complexity. All was good and much code was written since then. At 2005 a new version of the .NET Framework did arrive which did bring many new things like generics and new data structures. The “old” fashioned way of Hashtable were coming to an end and everyone used the new Dictionary<xx,xx> type instead which was type safe and faster because the object to type conversion (aka boxing) was no longer necessary. I think 95% of all Hashtables and dictionaries use string as key. Often it is convenient to ignore casing to make it easy to look up values which the user did enter. An often followed route is to convert the string to upper case before putting it into the Hashtable. Hashtable Table = new Hashtable(); void Add(string key, string value) { Table.Add(key.ToUpper(), value); } This is valid and working code but it has problems. First we can pass to the Hashtable a custom IEqualityComparer to do the string matching case insensitive. Second we can switch over to the now also old Dictionary type to become a little faster and we can keep the the original keys (not upper cased) in the dictionary. Dictionary<string, string> DictTable = new Dictionary<string, string>(StringComparer.OrdinalIgnoreCase); void AddDict(string key, string value) { DictTable.Add(key, value); } Many people do not user the other ctors of Dictionary because they do shy away from the overhead of writing their own comparer. They do not know that .NET has for strings already predefined comparers at hand which you can directly use. Today in the many core area we do use threads all over the place. Sometimes things break in subtle ways but most of the time it is sufficient to place a lock around the offender. Threading has become so mainstream that it may sound weird that in the year 2000 some guy got a huge incentive for the idea to reduce the time to process calibration data from 12 hours to 6 hours by using two threads on a dual core machine. Threading does make it easy to become faster at the expense of correctness. Correct and scalable multithreading can be arbitrarily hard to achieve depending on the problem you are trying to solve. Lets suppose we want to process millions of items with two threads and count the processed items processed by all threads. A typical beginners code might look like this: int Counter; void IJustLearnedToUseThreads() { var t1 = new Thread(ThreadWorkMethod); t1.Start(); var t2 = new Thread(ThreadWorkMethod); t2.Start(); t1.Join(); t2.Join(); if (Counter != 2 * Increments) throw new Exception("Hmm " + Counter + " != " + 2 * Increments); } const int Increments = 10 * 1000 * 1000; void ThreadWorkMethod() { for (int i = 0; i < Increments; i++) { Counter++; } } It does throw an exception with the message e.g. “Hmm 10.222.287 != 20.000.000” and does never finish. The code does fail because the assumption that Counter++ is an atomic operation is wrong. The ++ operator is just a shortcut for Counter = Counter + 1 This does involve reading the counter from a memory location into the CPU, incrementing value on the CPU and writing the new value back to the memory location. When we do look at the generated assembly code we will see only inc dword ptr [ecx+10h] which is only one instruction. Yes it is one instruction but it is not atomic. All modern CPUs have several layers of caches (L1,L2,L3) which try to hide the fact how slow actual main memory accesses are. Since cache is just another word for redundant copy it can happen that one CPU does read a value from main memory into the cache, modifies it and write it back to the main memory. The problem is that at least the L1 cache is not shared between CPUs so it can happen that one CPU does make changes to values which did change in meantime in the main memory. From the exception you can see we did increment the value 20 million times but half of the changes were lost because we did overwrite the already changed value from the other thread. This is a very common case and people do learn to protect their  data with proper locking.   void Intermediate() { var time = Stopwatch.StartNew(); Action acc = ThreadWorkMethod_Intermediate; var ar1 = acc.BeginInvoke(null, null); var ar2 = acc.BeginInvoke(null, null); ar1.AsyncWaitHandle.WaitOne(); ar2.AsyncWaitHandle.WaitOne(); if (Counter != 2 * Increments) throw new Exception(String.Format("Hmm {0:N0} != {1:N0}", Counter, 2 * Increments)); Console.WriteLine("Intermediate did take: {0:F1}s", time.Elapsed.TotalSeconds); } void ThreadWorkMethod_Intermediate() { for (int i = 0; i < Increments; i++) { lock (this) { Counter++; } } } This is better and does use the .NET Threadpool to get rid of manual thread management. It does give the expected result but it can result in deadlocks because you do lock on this. This is in general a bad idea since it can lead to deadlocks when other threads use your class instance as lock object. It is therefore recommended to create a private object as lock object to ensure that nobody else can lock your lock object. When you read more about threading you will read about lock free algorithms. They are nice and can improve performance quite a lot but you need to pay close attention to the CLR memory model. It does make quite weak guarantees in general but it can still work because your CPU architecture does give you more invariants than the CLR memory model. For a simple counter there is an easy lock free alternative present with the Interlocked class in .NET. As a general rule you should not try to write lock free algos since most likely you will fail to get it right on all CPU architectures. void Experienced() { var time = Stopwatch.StartNew(); Task t1 = Task.Factory.StartNew(ThreadWorkMethod_Experienced); Task t2 = Task.Factory.StartNew(ThreadWorkMethod_Experienced); t1.Wait(); t2.Wait(); if (Counter != 2 * Increments) throw new Exception(String.Format("Hmm {0:N0} != {1:N0}", Counter, 2 * Increments)); Console.WriteLine("Experienced did take: {0:F1}s", time.Elapsed.TotalSeconds); } void ThreadWorkMethod_Experienced() { for (int i = 0; i < Increments; i++) { Interlocked.Increment(ref Counter); } } Since time does move forward we do not use threads explicitly anymore but the much nicer Task abstraction which was introduced with .NET 4 at 2010. It is educational to look at the generated assembly code. The Interlocked.Increment method must be called which does wondrous things right? Lets see: lock inc dword ptr [eax] The first thing to note that there is no method call at all. Why? Because the JIT compiler does know very well about CPU intrinsic functions. Atomic operations which do lock the memory bus to prevent other processors to read stale values are such things. Second: This is the same increment call prefixed with a lock instruction. The only reason for the existence of the Interlocked class is that the JIT compiler can compile it to the matching CPU intrinsic functions which can not only increment by one but can also do an add, exchange and a combined compare and exchange operation. But be warned that the correct usage of its methods can be tricky. If you try to be clever and look a the generated IL code and try to reason about its efficiency you will fail. Only the generated machine code counts. Is this the best code we can write? Perhaps. It is nice and clean. But can we make it any faster? Lets see how good we are doing currently. Level Time in s IJustLearnedToUseThreads Flawed Code Intermediate 1,5 (lock) Experienced 0,3 (Interlocked.Increment) Master 0,1 (1,0 for int[2]) That lock free thing is really a nice thing. But if you read more about CPU cache, cache coherency, false sharing you can do even better. int[] Counters = new int[12]; // Cache line size is 64 bytes on my machine with an 8 way associative cache try for yourself e.g. 64 on more modern CPUs void Master() { var time = Stopwatch.StartNew(); Task t1 = Task.Factory.StartNew(ThreadWorkMethod_Master, 0); Task t2 = Task.Factory.StartNew(ThreadWorkMethod_Master, Counters.Length - 1); t1.Wait(); t2.Wait(); Counter = Counters[0] + Counters[Counters.Length - 1]; if (Counter != 2 * Increments) throw new Exception(String.Format("Hmm {0:N0} != {1:N0}", Counter, 2 * Increments)); Console.WriteLine("Master did take: {0:F1}s", time.Elapsed.TotalSeconds); } void ThreadWorkMethod_Master(object number) { int index = (int) number; for (int i = 0; i < Increments; i++) { Counters[index]++; } } The key insight here is to use for each core its own value. But if you simply use simply an integer array of two items, one for each core and add the items at the end you will be much slower than the lock free version (factor 3). Each CPU core has its own cache line size which is something in the range of 16-256 bytes. When you do access a value from one location the CPU does not only fetch one value from main memory but a complete cache line (e.g. 16 bytes). This means that you do not pay for the next 15 bytes when you access them. This can lead to dramatic performance improvements and non obvious code which is faster although it does have many more memory reads than another algorithm. So what have we done here? We have started with correct code but it was lacking knowledge how to use the .NET Base Class Libraries optimally. Then we did try to get fancy and used threads for the first time and failed. Our next try was better but it still had non obvious issues (lock object exposed to the outside). Knowledge has increased further and we have found a lock free version of our counter which is a nice and clean way which is a perfectly valid solution. The last example is only here to show you how you can get most out of threading by paying close attention to your used data structures and CPU cache coherency. Although we are working in a virtual execution environment in a high level language with automatic memory management it does pay off to know the details down to the assembly level. Only if you continue to learn and to dig deeper you can come up with solutions no one else was even considering. I have studied particle physics which does help at the digging deeper part. Have you ever tried to solve Quantum Chromodynamics equations? Compared to that the rest must be easy ;-). Although I am no longer working in the Science field I take pride in discovering non obvious things. This can be a very hard to find bug or a new way to restructure data to make something 10 times faster. Now I need to get some sleep ….

  Read the article

• Recasting and Drawing in SDL

  - by user1078123

  I have some code that essentially draws a column on the screen of a wall in a raycasting-type 3d engine. I am trying to optimize it, as it takes about 10 milliseconds do draw a million pixels using this, and the vast majority of game time is spent in this loop. However, I don't quite understand what's occurring, particularly the recasting (I modified the "pixel manipulation" sample code from the SDL documentation). "canvas" is the surface I am drawing to, and "hello" is the surface containing the texture for the column. int c = (curcol)* canvas->format->BytesPerPixel; void *canvaspixels = canvas->pixels; Uint16 texpitch = hello->pitch; int lim = (drawheight +startdraw) * canvpitch +c + (int) canvaspixels; Uint8 *k = (Uint8 *)hello->pixels + (hit)* hello->format->BytesPerPixel; for (int j= (startdraw)*(canvpitch)+c + (int) canvaspixels; (j< lim); j+= canvpitch){ Uint8 *q = (Uint8 *) ((int(h))*(texpitch)+k); *(Uint32 *)j = *(Uint32 *)q; h += s; } We have void pointers (not sure how those are even represented), 8, 16, and 32 bit ints (h and s are floats), all being intermingled, and while it works, it is quite confusing.

  Read the article

• Cheap ways to do scaling ops in shader?

  - by Nick Wiggill

  I've got an extensive world terrain that uses vec3 for the vertex position attribute. That's good, because the terrain has endless gradations due to the use of floating point. But I'm thinking about how to reduce the amount of data uploaded to the GPU. For my terrain, which uses discrete / grid-based vertex positions in x and z, it's pretty clear that I can replace my vec3s (floats, really) with shorts, halving the per-vertex position attribute cost from 12 bytes each to 6 bytes. Considering I've got little enough other vertex data, and an enormous amount of terrain data to push into the world, it's a major gain. Currently in my code, one unit in GLSL shaders is equal to 1m in the world. I like that scale. If I move over to using shorts, though, I won't be able to use the same scale, as I would then have a very blocky world where every step in height is an entire metre. So I see these potential solutions to scale the positional data correctly once it arrives at the vertex shader stage: Use 10:1 scaling, i.e. 1 short unit = 1 decimetre in CPU-side code. Do a division by 10 in the vertex shader to scale incoming decimetre values back to metres. Arbirary (non-PoT) divisions tend to be slow, however. Use (some-power-of-two):1 scaling (eg. 8:1), which enables the use of a bitshift (eg. val >> 3) to do the division... not sure how performant this is in shaders, though. Not as intuitive to read values, but possibly quite a bit faster than div by a non-PoT value. Use a texture as lookup table. I've heard that this is really fast. Or whatever solutions others can offer to achieve the same results -- minimal vertex data with sensible scaling.

  Read the article

• Jquery validation does not stop execution of "code behind" code of asp.net button

  - by shahk26

  Hi, I have a asp.net button which has click event which basically adds data into datbase. I also have a radiobuttonlist(i.e Approve / Decline) and a textbox. If user selects decline, the textbox becomes visible. I want to run validation that when user clicks on submit button, if the decline is selected then the textbox can not blank. I have used jquery validation for that. when I click button, the message apppears next to textbox that the field is required but it does not stop the execution of code behind. i.e.It adds data into database. Here is my code. <script type="text/javascript" language="javascript"> $(function() { $('#declinediv').hide(); //////// var $radBtn = $("table.rblist input:radio"); $radBtn.click(function() { var $radChecked = $(':radio:checked'); var value = $radChecked.val(); if (value == 'Decline' || value == 'Approve') { if (value == 'Decline') $('#declinediv').show(); else $('#declinediv').hide(); } else { $('#declinediv').hide(); } }); ////////////////////////// $("#aspnetForm").validate({ rules: { <%=txtdeclinereason.UniqueID %>: { minlength: 2, required: true } }, messages: { <%=txtdeclinereason.UniqueID %>:{ required: "* Required Field *", minlength: "* Please enter atleast 2 characters *" } }, onsubmit: true }); ////////////////////////////////// $('#btnsubmit').click(function(evt){ var isValid = $("#aspnetForm").valid(); if (!isValid) { evt.preventDefault(); } }); }); function myredirect(v, m, f) { window.location.href = v; } </script> <table style="border: 1px black solid; text-align: center; vertical-align: middle" width="100%"> <tr> <td> <asp:RadioButtonList ID="rbtnlstapprover" runat="server" RepeatDirection="Horizontal" CssClass="rblist" DataTextField="username" DataValueField="emailaddress"> <asp:ListItem Text="Approve" Value="Approve" /> <asp:ListItem Text="Decline" Value="Decline" /> </asp:RadioButtonList> <asp:RequiredFieldValidator ID="RequiredFieldValidator1" runat="server" ControlToValidate="rbtnlstapprover" Text="*" ErrorMessage="Please select atleast one Approver" ValidationGroup="approvalgroup" Display="Dynamic" /> </td> </tr> <tr> <td> <div id="declinediv"> <asp:TextBox ID="txtdeclinereason" runat="server" TextMode="MultiLine" Columns="80" Rows="5" /> </div> </td> </tr> <tr> <td> <asp:Button ID="btnsubmit" runat="server" Text="Submit" CssClass="RegularButton" CausesValidation="true" ValidationGroup="approvalgroup" OnClick="btnsubmit_Click" /> </td> </tr> </table> How do I stop the execution of code behind? Thanks for your help.

  Read the article

• Need a hand understanding this Java code please :-)

  - by Brian

  Hi all, Just wondering if anyone would be able to take a look at this code for implementing the quicksort algorithm and answer me a few questions, please :-) public class Run { /*************************************************************************** * Quicksort code from Sedgewick 7.1, 7.2. **************************************************************************/ public static void quicksort(double[] a) { //shuffle(a); // to guard against worst-case quicksort(a, 0, a.length - 1, 0); } static void quicksort(final double[] a, final int left, final int right, final int tdepth) { if (right <= left) return; final int i = partition(a, left, right); if ((tdepth < 4) && ((i - left) > 1000)) { final Thread t = new Thread() { public void run() { quicksort(a, left, i - 1, tdepth + 1); } }; t.start(); quicksort(a, i + 1, right, tdepth + 1); try { t.join(); } catch (InterruptedException e) { throw new RuntimeException("Cancelled", e); } } else { quicksort(a, left, i - 1, tdepth); quicksort(a, i + 1, right, tdepth); } } // partition a[left] to a[right], assumes left < right private static int partition(double[] a, int left, int right) { int i = left - 1; int j = right; while (true) { while (less(a[++i], a[right])) // find item on left to swap ; // a[right] acts as sentinel while (less(a[right], a[--j])) // find item on right to swap if (j == left) break; // don't go out-of-bounds if (i >= j) break; // check if pointers cross exch(a, i, j); // swap two elements into place } exch(a, i, right); // swap with partition element return i; } // is x < y ? private static boolean less(double x, double y) { return (x < y); } // exchange a[i] and a[j] private static void exch(double[] a, int i, int j) { double swap = a[i]; a[i] = a[j]; a[j] = swap; } // shuffle the array a[] private static void shuffle(double[] a) { int N = a.length; for (int i = 0; i < N; i++) { int r = i + (int) (Math.random() * (N - i)); // between i and N-1 exch(a, i, r); } } // test client public static void main(String[] args) { int N = 5000000; // Integer.parseInt(args[0]); // generate N random real numbers between 0 and 1 long start = System.currentTimeMillis(); double[] a = new double[N]; for (int i = 0; i < N; i++) a[i] = Math.random(); long stop = System.currentTimeMillis(); double elapsed = (stop - start) / 1000.0; System.out.println("Generating input: " + elapsed + " seconds"); // sort them start = System.currentTimeMillis(); quicksort(a); stop = System.currentTimeMillis(); elapsed = (stop - start) / 1000.0; System.out.println("Quicksort: " + elapsed + " seconds"); } } My questions are: What is the purpose of the variable tdepth? Is this considered a "proper" implementation of a parallel quicksort? I ask becuase it doesn't use implements Runnable or extends Thread... If it doesn't already, is it possible to modify this code to use multiple threads? By passing in the number of threads you want to use as a parameter, for example...? Many thanks, Brian

  Read the article

• Code Golf: 1x1 black pixel

  - by Joey Adams

  Recently, I used my favorite image editor to make a 1x1 black pixel (which can come in handy when you want to draw solid boxes in HTML cheaply). Even though I made it a monochrome PNG, it came out to be 120 bytes! I mean, that's kind of steep. 120 bytes. For one pixel. I then converted it to a GIF, which dropped the size down to 43 bytes. Much better, but still... Challenge The shortest image file or program that is or generates a 1x1 black pixel. A submission may be: An image file that represents a 1x1 black pixel. The format chosen must be able to represent larger images than 1x1, and cannot be ad-hoc (that is, it can't be an image format you just made up for code golf). Image files will be ranked by byte count. A program that generates such an image file. Programs will be ranked by character count, as usual in code golf. As long as an answer falls into one of these two categories, anything is fair game.

  Read the article

• Code Golf: Leibniz formula for Pi

  - by Greg Beech

  I recently posted one of my favourite interview whiteboard coding questions in "What's your more controversial programming opinion", which is to write a function that computes Pi using the Leibniz formula. It can be approached in a number of different ways, and the exit condition takes a bit of thought, so I thought it might make an interesting code golf question. Shortest code wins! Given that Pi can be estimated using the function 4 * (1 - 1/3 + 1/5 - 1/7 + ...) with more terms giving greater accuracy, write a function that calculates Pi to within 0.00001. Edit: 3 Jan 2008 As suggested in the comments I changed the exit condition to be within 0.00001 as that's what I really meant (an accuracy 5 decimal places is much harder due to rounding and so I wouldn't want to ask that in an interview, whereas within 0.00001 is an easier to understand and implement exit condition). Also, to answer the comments, I guess my intention was that the solution should compute the number of iterations, or check when it had done enough, but there's nothing to prevent you from pre-computing the number of iterations and using that number. I really asked the question out of interest to see what people would come up with.

  Read the article

• Programming language shootout: code most like pseudocode for Dijkstra's Algorithm

  - by Casebash

  Okay, so this question here asked which language is most like executable pseudocode, so why not find out by actually writing some code! Here we have a competition where I will award a 100 point bounty (I know its not much, but I am poor after the recalc) to the code which most resembles this pseudocode. I've read through this a few times so I'm pretty sure that this pseudocode below is correct and about as unambiguous as pseudocode can be. Personally, I'm going to have a go in Python and probably Haskell as well, but I'm just learning the later so my attempt will probably be pretty poor. Note: Obviously to implement anything looking like this you'll have to define quite a few library functions. define DirectedGraph G with: Vertices as V, Edges as E define Vertex A, Z declare each e in E as having properties: Boolean fixed with: initial=false Real minSoFar with: initial=0 for A else infinity define PriorityQueue pq with: objects=V initial=A priority v=v.minSoFar create triggers for v in V: when v.minSoFar event reduced then pq.addOrUpdate v when v.fixed event becomesTrue then pq.remove v Repeat until Z.fixed==True: define Vertex U=pq.pop() U.fixed=True for Edge E adjacentTo U with other Vertex V: V.minSoFar=U.minSoFar+length(E) if reducesValue return Z.name, Z.minSoFar

  Read the article

• Code Golf: Tic Tac Toe

  - by Aistina

  Post your shortest code, by character count, to check if a player has won, and if so, which. Assume you have an integer array in a variable b (board), which holds the Tic Tac Toe board, and the moves of the players where: 0 = nothing set 1 = player 1 (X) 2 = player 2 (O) So, given the array b = [ 1, 2, 1, 0, 1, 2, 1, 0, 2 ] would represent the board X|O|X -+-+- |X|O -+-+- X| |O For that situation, your code should output 1 to indicate player 1 has won. If no-one has won you can output 0 or false. My own (Ruby) solution will be up soon. Edit: Sorry, forgot to mark it as community wiki. You can assume the input is well formed and does not have to be error checked. Update: Please post your solution in the form of a function. Most people have done this already, but some haven't, which isn't entirely fair. The board is supplied to your function as the parameter. The result should be returned by the function. The function can have a name of your choosing.

  Read the article

• Code Golf: Connect 4

  - by Matthieu M.

  If you don't know the Connect 4 game, follow the link :) I used to play it a lot when I was a child. At least until my little sister got bored with me winning... Anyway I was reading the Code Golf: Tic Tac Toe the other day and I thought that solving the Tic Tac Toe problem was simpler than solving the Connect 4... and wondered how much this would reflect on the number of characters a solution would yield. I thus propose a similar challenge: Find the winner The grid is given under the form of a string meant to passed as a parameter to a function. The goal of the code golf is to write the body of the function, the parameter will be b, of string type The image in the wikipedia article leads to the following representation: "....... ..RY... ..YYYR. ..RRYY. ..RYRY. .YRRRYR" (6 rows of 7 elements) but is obviously incomplete (Yellow has not won yet) There is a winner in the grid passed, no need to do error checking Remember that it might not be exactly 4 The expected output is the letter representing the winner (either R or Y) I expect perl mongers to produce the most unreadable script (along with Ook and whitespace, of course), but I am most interested in reading innovative solutions. I must admit the magic square solution for Tic Tac Toe was my personal fav and I wonder if there is a way to build a similar one with this. Well, happy Easter weekend :) Now I just have a few days to come up with a solution of my own!

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71  | Next Page >