10/23/2006

A student writes:

        Hello Dr. Patt,

        I had a question as to whether or not the given 
        set of ascii codes on the
        programming assignment were all that we would 
        have to sort, or will there
        be different codes that we would have to sort. 
        (Instead of sorting the 16
        given ascii codes, will we have to sort any of 
        the other 10 possible lower case letters?)

        Thanks

        <<name withheld to protect the ...>>


I went back and re-read the statement of the program.  I am having
trouble seeing the confusion.  I think it says pretty clearly that 
you are asked to write a program that will sort the information 
contained in 16 memory locations, wherein each information item 
is the ascii code of a single lower case letter of the alphabet.  
Where is the confusion?  If someone can help me understand the 
confusion, I welcome your help.

Then you go on to ask if you will have to sort any of the other 10 
possible lower case letters.  What other ten letters?  

It occurs to me that you might have meant the ten letters not 
contained in the 16 memory locations, since there are 26 letters 
in the English alphabet.  But that would imply that the 16 letters 
in the 16 locations were unique, and surely you know that is not 
the case from a simple glance at the example provided.  So, I still 
do not know where "the other 10 letters" come from.

The problem asks you to write a program that will sort the contents
of memory locations x30F0 to x30FF, where the contents of each memory
location is pretty clearly the ascii code of a single lower case letter.

I have a question for you:  The problem statement gives an Example of 
a specific instance of the contents of the 16 memory locations.  Suppose 
we call this example a configuration.  How many possible distinct 
configurations of memory locations x30F0 to x30FF are there? 

Your job in this assignment:  Write a program to sort the contents of
these memory locations, regardless which configuration is the data for
your program.

Yale Patt