Re: What's the best language to start with

[frank@bigdog.engr.arizona.edu (Frank Manning)]

In article <Pine.A32.3.91.960811134122.76393A-100000@wc.airshields.com>
Tim Behrendsen <tim@airshields.com> writes:

  [ Bonus interview question ]

----
> You are writing a preprocessor program that takes C source as
> its input.  The preprocessor replaces all variables and symbols
> in the program with unique names of the form VARxxxxxx, where
> "xxxxxx" is an incrementing decimal number.  Describe what is
> needed to handle the case where the input source file already
> contains a variable of that form.
----

OK, I'll bite. I'd say that particular case is handled just like any
other case. The input variable/symbol is a completely separate entity
from output string "VARxxxxxx" you replace it with, except for the
1:1 mapping of input vs. output strings. Examples:

   INPUT          OUTPUT

   abc            VAR000001
   Color_Value    VAR000002
   VAR000001      VAR000003
   VAR000004      VAR000004
   X_Prime        VAR000005

Nah...that was too easy. I musta missed something...

-- Frank Manning