[Upstate518]

I have to take the string "SUPERcalAFRAGiliSTICExpeALLEDocious” and decomposes the string so that the every three or five letters is printed on a different line starting with the last group and proceeding from the rear of the string to the front.

If the first letter of the group you are examining is lowercase, you should remove the next three letters and they should be converted to uppercase before printing. and vice versa.
If the first letter of the group is uppercase, you should remove the next five letters and they should be converted to lowercase.

I have a start but its not much, im confused as to how I examine all the different parts of the string and determine if the character is upper or lowercase

Heres my code thus far:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;

namespace StringManip
{
    class strings
    {
        static void Main()
        {
            string word = "SUPERcalAFRAGiliSTICExpeALLEDocious";
            string group;

            for (int pos = 0; pos < word.Length; pos++)
            {
                if (word == word.IsLower())
                {

                    group = word.Substring(word[pos], 4);
                    Console.WriteLine(group);

                }
                else
                {

                    group = word.Substring(word[pos], 2);
                    Console.WriteLine(group);
                }
                
                    
            }

        }
    }
}

[tlhIn`toq]

Reminder to new folks: This is homework and we don't provide completed code for homework. Rather we try to help the student comprehend the concept they are struggling with so they can write their own code. They are being graded on their skill not ours.

This is the 'Help me with my homework' article you wanted.

[Upstate518]

Yeah it is my homework, thats why im looking for help on it?

[tlhIn`toq]

Please don't be offended but... you need to actually make a good faith effort at coding this to follow the instructions. Whacking out 45 seconds of a for..loop really what I would call a "good faith effort to solve the issue." It really doesn't even attempt to work according to the instructions:

Quote

last group and proceeding from the rear of the string to the front.

When you start at the front and work toward the back:

15 for (int pos = 0; pos < word.Length; pos++)


Let's talk about the logic of it:

You need to start at the last character and check if that character is upper or lower case. Keep working backwards until you find a character of the opposite case; tracking the position you started at.

Once you have found a character of the opposite case you know the sub-word is from where you are +1, to where you started.

[Upstate518]

how would i test it though to determine whether its upper or lower case? thats my biggest issue

[tlhIn`toq]

17 if (word == word.IsLower())

Huh? Are you just making up methods as you go along hoping they might exist?

Where did you get ".IsLower()" from? There is no such method in the string class.



Is it possible you meant ".ToLower()" ?

[Upstate518]

yeah i meant to lower, im just having trouble testing each individual character for its case through the string

[tlhIn`toq]

Upstate518, on 02 February 2012 - 08:16 PM, said:

how would i test it though to determine whether its upper or lower case? thats my biggest issue

I'm trying to remain polite and helpful, so please forgive how this sounds.
If the lesson is on the case of characters and strings, then I'd bet this was covered in class lecture or possibly in your textbook. They don't just throw you to the wolves and ask you to do things they didn't teach/cover in class as well as not covered in the book.

Here is the MSDN page on String.ToLower()
http://msdn.microsof...y/e78f86at.aspx

[Upstate518]

i tried this:

if(word[pos]==word.ToLower)

but that did not work

give me a break its my second semester of programming

[tlhIn`toq]

Upstate518, on 02 February 2012 - 08:21 PM, said:

yeah i meant to lower, im just having trouble testing each individual character for its case through the string

So you meant .ToLower().... Which means the code you provided to get help on won't compile or run. It would produce an error letting you know that no such method exists.

[Upstate518]

Yeah I know... thats why I came here looking for help

[tlhIn`toq]

Upstate518, on 02 February 2012 - 08:24 PM, said:

i tried this:

if(word[pos]==word.ToLower)

but that did not work

give me a break its my second semester of programming

Second SEMESTER ? So you've been in this course for 4 months? And somehow you are trying to compare a single character to the entire word and expecting it could somehow match?

In your example the first time through the loop you are checking this:

if (s == "SUPERcalAFRAGiliSTICExpeALLEDocious".ToLower())
{
    // then do this
}

Ummm... I don't even know where to go or what to say from here.

If this is where you are going on 4-5 months into this course you really need to seek out your instructor and ask about tutoring so you can get caught up. You cannot continue to bluff your way through the course in the hopes that it is going to spontaneously start making sense in a couple more weeks.

I'm not trying to stop you from coding. Or demoralize you. I want you to code. But it is very very clear you need some help to get caught up. I want to see you learn, not throw away your tuition money.

I will point out that you aren't required to only learn from the course textbook. There are numerous self-teaching books that would have you a lot further along than playing with string case after about 4 days instead of 4 months. As well as an entire internet full of tutorials and on-line self-teaching resources. You can use them in conjunction with your course textbook and professor.

---

Resources, references and suggestions for new programmers. - Updated Jan 2012

---

Spoiler

Quote

I already have a background in programming from this other software/technology/lanugage so I don't think I need to do tutorials

Here's how I look at doing tutorials even if one has a coding background that makes one think they don't need to do tutorials:

• If one's background really is enough to not need the tutorials, then they won't take long - So what's the harm?
  
• If the tutorials do take a while, then it might be time to re-think how much of one's old experience really applies to the new technology.
  
• There's no down-side. Every tutorial/series teaches something in a new way. Maybe you pick up a neat trick or a different approach to something that you already knew.

The stages of asking for homework help on a forum

Finding answers to specific problems:
Sometimes just knowing where to look can make all the difference. Google is your friend.
Search with either "C#" or "MSDN" as the first word: "MSDN Picturebox", "C# Custom Events", "MSDN timer" etc.
How to do a good search that will get you targeted answers.

Once you have that MSDN page that describes the function, you may not be familiar with out to actually get useful information from that page. There is a LOT of data there. So what is the important parts? Read this guide to reading the MSDN.

Don't think you are the first person to ask a question. Try a search on this site to see if someone has already brought up this problem. Also, as soon as you post your question go to the bottom of the updated page: You will see where the system has already analyzed your question and tried to find similar threads for the same question, so check those links out.

But honestly, just typing away and seeing what pops up in Intellisense is going to make your self-education take 20 years. You can learn by trying to reverse engineer the language through banging on the keyboard experimentation - or you can learn by doing the tutorials and following a good "How to learn C#" book. There are so many great "How do I build my first application" tutorials on the web... There are dozens of "Learn C# in 21 days", "My first C# program" type books at your local book seller or even public library.

Beginner:
C# Fundamentals: Development for absolute beginners (video series)
Build a Program Now! in Visual C# by Microsoft Press, ISBN 0-7356-2542-5 is a terrific book that has you build a Windows Forms application, a WPF app, a database application, your own web browser.

Martyr2's mega project ideas list is a great place to start on developmental projectst that you can learn from; rather than trying to make something complex like a game as a self-teaching tool {that never works for anyone}

Visual Studio Keyboard Shortcuts

D.I.C. C# Resource page Start here
Intro to C# online tutorial then here...
C# control structures then here.
MSDN Beginner Developer video series
MSDN video on OOP principals, making classes, constructors, accessors and method overloading
MSDN Top guideline violations, know what to avoid before you do it.
Design patterns as diagrams

I hate sending people to another site when we have such good tutorials here, but this series shouldn't be overlooked.
Programming OOP in C# - Part 1
Programming OOP in C# - Part 2
Programming OOP in C# - Part 3
Programming OOP in C# - Part 4
Programming OOP in C# - Part 5

Writing a text file is always one of the first things people want to do, in order to store data like high-scores, preferences and so on.
Writing a text file tutorial.
Reading a text file tutorial.

Have you seen the 500+ MSDN Code Samples? They spent a lot of time creating samples and demos. It seems a shame to not use them.

Intermediate:
Microsoft Events (webcasts and podcasts)
The tutorials below walk through making an application including inheritance, custom events and custom controls, object serialization and more.
Quick and easy custom events
Bulding an application - Part 1
Building an application - Part 2
Separating data from GUI - PLUS - serializing the data to XML
WPF version (WPF-MVVM data binding)
Passing values between forms/classes
Decouple your multi-threaded work from the GUI so forms don't hang

Working with environmental variables
'Why do we use delegates?' thread
And everyone always wants to connect to a database, right out of the gate so Database tutorials right here on DIC

C# Cookbooks
Are a great place to get good code, broken down by need, written by coding professionals. You can use the code as-is, but take the time to actually study it. These professionals write in a certain style for a reason developed by years of experience and heartache.

Everyone:
Debugging tutorial
Debugging tips
Debugging in detail
Great debugging tips
It still doesn't work, article

I urge you to work through the C# learning series here on DIC, and to work a self-teaching book from cover to cover before you even think about designing your own applications.
Microsoft Visual Studio Tips, 251 ways to improve your productivity, Microsoft press, ISBN 0-7356-2640-5 Has many, many great, real-world tips that I use all the time.

These are just good every-day references to put in your bookmarks.
MSDN C# Developers Center with tutorials
Welcome to Visual Studio
Free editions of Visual Studio 2010

Windows Presentation Foundation:
Create Animations Programmatically

Let me also throw in a few tips:

• You have to program as if everything breaks, nothing works, the cyberworld is not perfect, the attached hardware is flakey, the network is slow and unreliable, the harddrive is about to fail, every method will return an error and every user will do their best to break your software. Confirm everything. Range check every value. Make no assumptions or presumptions.
  
  
• Take the extra 3 seconds to rename your controls each time you drag them onto a form. The default names of button1, button2... button54 aren't very helpful. If you rename them right away to something like btnOk, btnCancel, btnSend etc. it helps tremendously when you make the methods for them because they are named after the button by the designer.btnSend_Click(object sender, eventargs e) is a lot easier to maintain than button1_click(object sender, eventargs e)
  
  
• You aren't paying for variable names by the byte. So instead of variables names of a, b, c go ahead and use meaningful names like index, timeOut, row, column and so on. You should avoid 'T' for the timer. Amongst other things 'T' is commonly used throughout C# for Type and this will lead to problems. There are naming guidelines you should follow so your code confirms to industry standards. It makes life much easier on everyone around you, including those of us here to help. If you start using the standards from the beginning you don't have to retrain yourself later.
  You might want to look at some of the naming guidelines. Its a lot easier to start with good habits than to break bad habits later and re-learn.
  
  
  • Guidelines for names
    
  • Naming guidelines
    
  • Design guidelines for classes
  
  
  
• Try to avoid having work actually take place in GUI control event handlers. It is usually better to have the GUI handler call other methods so those methods can be reused and make the code more readible.
  
  Spoiler

  
  

  btnSave(object sender, eventargs e)
  {
      SavePreferences();
  }
  
  SaveMenuItem(object sender, eventargs e)
  {
      SavePreferences();
  }
  
  SaveContextMenu(object sender, eventargs e)
  {
      SavePreferences();
  }
  
  FormMain_Closing(object sender, eventargs e)
  {
      if (IsDirty) SavePreferences();
  }
  

  
  
  
• Don't replace lines of code that don't work. Instead comment them out and put your new attemps below that. This will keep you from re-trying the same ideas over and over. Also, when you come back to us saying "I've tried this 100 different ways and still can't get it", we can actually see what you tried. So often a failed attempt is very very close and just needs a little nudge in the right direction. So if we can say "See what you did in attempt 3... blah blah" it helps a lot
  
  
  Spoiler

  // Try #1 - May 1, 0900hrs
  //    code
  //    code  
  //    code
  // Try #2 - May 2, 1700hrs   Okay, plan B.  What if I do it *this* way
  //    code
  //    code  
  //    code
  // Try #14 - May 3, 0500hrs after 5 cans of RedBull.  Maybe I should get some sleep. I can't think of anything else but this last idea
      code
      code  
      code
  
  

  
  If you are using Visual Studio you can select a block of lines and hit control+k control+c (Kode Comment) to comment it out. control+k control+u (Kode Uncomment) to uncomment a selected block.
  
  
  
• I strongly suggest installing VMware or some other virtualization technology on your development PC so you can create a couple virtual computers for testing. This would allow you to debug and test inside: WinXP32, XP64, Vista, Win7x32, Win7x64... etc. without having to actually have 5 physical PC's. Visual Studio will let you send the debug directly into one of these virtual machines so you can watch it operate, check its variables, see the crashes and so on just as if it were debugging on your real machine.
  
  
• This can't be stressed enough in today's world of cell phone messaging:
  Don't use txt/sms/leet/T9 speak like: u no, u r, dnt, wut i m do-n, coz, al gud, b4, ny1, and so on like this guy:
  
  
  Spoiler

  dis not b d'hood dawg... You are sitting at a real keyboard with a real monitor, not a cell phone. You are not here texting your high school posse to come to your kegger after their shift at Taco Bell. You are here asking for help from senior coding professionals who graciously donate their valuable time to helping the next generation of coders with their chosen craft. Please try to show them, yourself and the industry some respect by writing at least at an eighth grade level. (IE: English not ebonics or SMS, real words, punctuation and so on). If you can't take your own problem/question seriously enough to write like an adult, then why would you expect anyone else to take it seriously?
  
  When you write a post you are presenting yourself. Your writing style is all you have to show others who you are and what you stand for. When I see posts filled with lack of capitalization, SMS text like 'Urself', lack of punctuation and so on; what I see is someone who just doesn't care to make even an eighth grade presentation of themselves. I also see that you feel we are not worth the effort. Posts that look like this show that you don't feel the person you are talking to is worth speaking to as an adult. If you show this level of contempt or apathy towards someone you are asking for help how can you expect to be taken seriously or expect to receive that expert's fullest attention and time to help you?

[superkb10]

Hey, I'm pretty new to C#, but I'm fairly certain that ToLower() doesn't tell you whether or not the character/string is uppercase or lowercase, but more rather converts the entire string to lowercase. ToLower() is usually used when someone wishes to ignore case.

Of course I could be entirely wrong, as once again, I'm fairly new to C# and programming in general.

[Upstate518]

its the second week of the class, and my second week of programming in c#. I did c++ before, all i did was ask for some help on how to do it and your just trying to make me look like a fool.

[tlhIn`toq]

I'm not looking to make you out to be a fool. It's just hard to know where to begin to help someone when they are asking for help on methods that don't exist. Where would you start trying to help someone if they asked for help on how to unbuckle a seatbelt when the pullcord didn't work? You'd be wondering... "The pull cord?? WTF?"

Effectively this means you were trying to pass off code that won't compile as code you've been working really hard on before finally giving up and asking for help. Since we're not idiots here we know it won't run. Which means we know you've got all of 60 seconds into that before asking others to help.

Before I go to bed I'm going to point out that just as you learned in C++, not every single solitary possibility you could ever need has been pre-written for you to just use. You might, just maybe, have to use a little bit of thought about how to combine things to form what we in the developer world call... Logic.

If (word[pos] == word[pos].ToLower)
{
   // Then the character at position is LowerCase
}

Please forgive my tone. Its late. I have a crappy attitude. And I don't have my customary level of tolerance.

Programming is basically solving brain teasers through code. That's what the job is. That is what you can look forward to if you pursue this as a career. If you don't enjoy and excel at unwrapping a puzzle, turning it on its head, seeing it from numerous perspectives to CREATE a solution... rather than trying to find the pre-made command to solve it... well...

Again... Sorry for my having a pissy attitude.