Question

I am going to be making a program that reads in a line and gets up to 6 numbers. The program will eventually solve a a square matrix between 2×2 and 6×6. My question is what errors do I need to look for on the get_numb() function?

I am thinking that the function will have to check character by character to make sure that the individual characters are actual numbers and not a EOF or \n. I will have to also check that there is not more than 6 numbers on a line. I am about a week into programing, so is there anything I need to know to tackle this?

Answer 1

I absolutely recommend you start by taking into use a good unit testing framework, and write unit tests as you go. This way you can cover all the cases you mention above, and make sure that your program really works the way you think it should work.

There are loads of questions on SO about C unit testing frameworks; pick your favourite.

Apart from the cases you mention, I can think of the following:

• less than 6 numbers on a line
• empty line
• (if the numbers are floating point, various number formats)

If your teacher gave you sample input / output, you may of course incorporate that into your unit tests as well.