Exercise 2-0

Compile and run the program presented in this chapter.

Solution

Note: The comprehensive program and explanation are documented very clearly in chapter 2 of the book. Refer to the chapter for details.

This is what the program does:

• Ask user for his first name.
• Display a framed greeting message that looks like this:

******************
*                *
* Hello, Johnny! *
*                *
******************

Specification as follows:

• The greeting message is in the middle of the frame.
• We add a padding of 1 (space character) all the way around the greeting message.
• We display the frame with asterisk (*).

This is the full code as described in the chapter. I have added some extra brackets for clarity purpose.

#include <iostream>
#include <string>

// say what standard-library names we use
using std::cin;
using std::endl;
using std::cout;
using std::string;

int main()
{
    // ask for the person's name
    cout << "Please enter your first name: ";

    // read the name
    string name;
    cin >> name;

    // build the message that we intend to write
    const string greeting = "Hello, " + name + "!";

    // the number of blanks surrounding the greeting
    const int pad = 1;

    // the number of rows and columns to write
    const int rows = ( pad * 2 ) + 3;
    const string::size_type cols = greeting.size() + ( pad * 2 ) + 2;

    // write a blank line to separate the output from the input
    cout << endl;

    // write 'rows' rows of output
    // invariant: we have written r rows so far
    for ( int r = 0; r != rows ; ++r )
    {
        string::size_type c = 0;

        // invariant: we have written c characters so far in the current row
        while ( c != cols)
        {
            // is it time to write the greeting?
            if ( ( r == pad + 1 ) && ( c == pad + 1 ) )
            {
                cout << greeting;
                c += greeting.size();
            }
            else
            {
                // are we on the border?
                if (
                       ( r == 0 )         // top row
                    || ( r == rows - 1 )  // or bottom row
                    || ( c == 0 )         // or left-most column
                    || ( c == cols - 1 )  // or right-most column
                   )
                {
                    cout <<  "*";
                }
                else
                {
                    cout << " ";
                }
                ++c;
            }
        }
        cout << endl;
    }
    return 0;
}

Result

The program compiles successfully and produce the following output in the standard console output window.

Please enter your first name: Johnny

******************
*                *
* Hello, Johnny! *
*                *
******************

Process returned 0 (0x0)   execution time : 2.699 s
Press any key to continue.

Reference