SQL

SQL is the language of relational databases.  Solving problems efficiently with SQL will require you to think in sets rather than procedurally.  Hopefully our foray into relational algebra has helped you hone those skills.  Some reading:

  • Pro MySQL by Kruckenberg and Pipes (APress Publisher) – Chapter 7: Essential SQL.  The book is available in PDF through the SMU Central University Libraries Website.
  • SQL Tutorial

Command Line Args in C++

As you’re already familiar with, when you call some functions, you need to pass arguments to them.  So, what about main?  There are two different function headers for he main method in C++ that we can use:

int main (); //header 1

and

int main(int argc, char* argv[]); //header 2

Now, you should ask yourself, “What’s the difference?”  Remember that when you execute a program (either from the command line or by double-clicking on an icon or something similar), you’re really asking the OS to load the executable and begin execution.  When the OS is starting your program, you can use command line arguments to send arguments into the main method.  Consider this program execution:

./myFunGame input.txt output.txt

[Read more…]

Data Structures Intro

The first few weeks of the semester, we’ll take a deep(er) dive into pointers and dynamic memory management using C++.  To get started, I wanted to provide you some links to useful information.

Regarding our first topic, pointers and memory management, here are some links to some other blog posts I did over the summer that might be helpful: