Chapter 9 Solutions to exercises from the book C Primer Plus by Stephen Prata

Exercise 1:

Devise a function called min(x,y) that returns the smaller of two double values. Test the function with a simple driver.

Exercise 2:
Devise a function chline(ch,i,j) that prints the requested character in columns i through j. Test it in a simple driver.

Exercise 3
Write a function that takes three arguments: a character and two integers.
The character is to be printed. The first integer specifies the number of times that the character is to be printed on a line, and the second integer specifies the number of lines that are to be printed. Write a program that makes use of this function.

Exercise 5:
Write and test a function called larger_of() that replaces the contents of two double variables with the maximum of the two values. For example,larger_of(x,y) would reset both x and y to the larger of the two.

Exercise 6:
Write and test a function that takes the addresses of three double variables as arguments and that moves the value of the smallest variable into the first variable, the middle value to the second variable, and the largest value into the third variable.

Exercise 7:
Write a program that reads characters from the standard input to end-of-file. For each character, have the program report whether it is a letter. If it is a letter, also report its numerical location in the alphabet. For example, c and C would both be letter 3. Incorporate a function that takes a character as an argument and returns the numerical location if the character is a letter and that returns –1 otherwise.

Exercise 8
Chapter 6, “C Control Statements: Looping,” (Listing 6.20) shows a power() function that returned the result of raising a type double number to a positive integer value. Improve the function so that it correctly handles negative powers. Also, build into the function that 0 to any power other than 0 is 0 and that any number to the 0 power is 1. (It should report that 0 to the 0 is undefined, then say it’s using a value of 1.) Use a loop. Test the function in a program.

Exercise 9

Redo Programming Exercise 8, but this time use a recursive function.

Exercise 10:

Generalize the to_binary() function of Listing 9.8 to a to_base_n() function that takes a second argument in the range 2–10. It then should print the number that is its first argument to the number base given by the second argument. For example, to_ base_n(129,8) would display 201, the base-8 equivalent of 129. Test the function in a complete program.

Exercise 11:

Write and test a Fibonacci() function that uses a loop instead of recursion to calculate Fibonacci numbers.