CS 1500 Class

Lab Assignment #10

Read up to at least page 274 in "Tapestry" before preparing
this lab.

Your job is to write a program that:

1. asks the user to specify a word and a text file,
2. tells the user how many times the word occurs in the file.

Here are a few sample runs:
============================================================

tester@alcyone:(~/CS1500/Lab10) a.out
Please enter the name of the file you want checked: quotes
Please enter the word you want to look for: lion
number of times the word "lion" was read = 3

tester@alcyone:(~/CS1500/Lab10) a.out
Please enter the name of the file you want checked: quotes
Please enter the word you want to look for: goat
number of times the word "goat" was read = 2

tester@alcyone:(~/CS1500/Lab10) a.out
Please enter the name of the file you want checked: quotes
Please enter the word you want to look for: forth
number of times the word "forth" was read = 5

tester@alcyone:(~/CS1500/Lab10) a.out
Please enter the name of the file you want checked: my_countw2.cc
Please enter the word you want to look for: int
number of times the word "int" was read = 3

============================================================

If you want to see a program that does a job similar to the
program you are being asked to write for this lab, look at
my_countw2.cc in this directory.

I want you to get more practice writing functions, so your
program must have two functions: one function to get the word
and filename from the user, and another function to do the work
of counting the occurrences of the word and reporting the count.

If you would like to have a "starter program," you may use the
file

countword.shell

in this directory.  Just save a copy of countword.shell under
the name countword.cc, and add code to it.  

To write this program you will need to write a loop that reads
a word (really, a string) at a time from the input file.
Within the body of the loop, use an if-statement to test the
latest string read to see if it is equal to the particular word
that the user is interested in.  If so, a counter should be
incremented.

GETTING IT RIGHT:

Plan your lab program during the week.  You don't have to write
it out in totally correct C++ before the lab starts.  However,
you should at least try to write a specific step-by-step
description of what your program will do.  Write this plan so
that it will be easy to translate into C++ when the time
comes.  Write some C++ statements in advance if you anticipate
having difficulty with them.  In lab, compare plans with your
partner and execute a good compromise plan.

Compile, test, and debug repeatedly until the program is
working correctly.  

Use an editor to make a small text file.  Pick certain words
and put them into the file.  Keep track of how many times these
words occur in the file.  Test your program using your file and
the words you picked.  This way you can compare the values the
program outputs with what you know the values are supposed to
be.  You will know if the program is making errors.

If you make an error in how you write the loop code, there is a
possibility that your loop will become a "runaway" or "infinite"
loop.  If your program takes excessive time to finish, you can
force it to abort by typing a control-c.

SENDING IT IN:

When finished make a script using this command:

prompt> script lab10.script

next cat your input file.  In other words, if the input file
you made for testing your program is called

my_input

then do the command 

prompt> cat my_input

That way, the contents of your input file will be seen in the
script.  When I look at your script, I need to know what is in
your input file so that I will be able to tell if your program
got correct results.

Next proceed to run the program several times, changing the
word you ask to be counted each time.

(You'll lose points if you don't do a reasonable testing job
as described above.)

After exiting the script, filter the script like this:

prompt> cat lab10.script | col -b > temp
prompt> mv temp lab10.script

Next, check that the script is OK by doing this command:

prompt> more lab10.script

Press the space bar repeatedly to see more and more of the
file, if necessary.  If the script is OK, then e-mail it to me
with this command:

prompt> mail -v -s "lab10 script" john@ishi.csustan.edu < lab10.script

PLEASE: The -s "lab10 script" part of the command above is very
        important to me.  Reproduce it exactly.

Check that the source file is OK by doing:

prompt> more countword.cc

Above, you have to replace "countword.cc" with whatever the name of
your source file is.

If the source file is OK then mail a copy of the source file
with a command like this:

prompt> mail -v -s "lab10 source" john@ishi.csustan.edu < countword.cc

Of course, you need to replace "countword.cc" with the name of
your source file if it is different.