InstallShield 5.5 - Array of strings - installshield

I "inherited" an old InstallShield 5.5 project which I need to modify.
One change I need to do involves a list of strings I have to populate.
I am looking to to define an array of strings. I tried this:
STRING ListOfStrings[10];
But when I try this:
ListOfStrings[1] = "test";
I get an error: error C8038: numeric value required
But this does work:
ListOfStrings[1] = 123;
Looks like the declaration of the ListOfStrings is of an array of chars, not an array of strings.

That's right, the notation STRING str[10] declares an array of 10 characters. (STRING itself is a resizable array of characters.) InstallScript is not a modern language. It's somewhat of a cross between C and VB, but changes several things. If you want a list of strings, you probably need to use the List Processing Functions, in particular declaring and creating a list of strings:
LIST lst;
STRING szString;
// : : :
lst = ListCreate(STRINGLIST);
szString = "test";
ListAddString(lst, szString, AFTER);
// : : :
In addition you should use some error checking, like that shown on the ListAddString example.
In less common situations it may be useful to declare an array of POINTER objects (or optionally WPOINTER objects in later versions). (Update your question if you think that might be necessary).

Related

Reading a comma-separated string (not text file) in Matlab

I want to read a string in Matlab (not an external text file) which has numerical values separated by commas, such as
a = {'1,2,3'}
and I'd like to store it in a vector as numbers. Is there any function which does that? I only find processes and functions used to do that with text files.
I think you're looking for sscanf
A = sscanf(str,formatSpec) reads data from str, converts it according
to the format specified by formatSpec, and returns the results in an
array. str is either a character array or a string scalar.
You can try the str2num function:
vec = str2num('1,2,3')
If you have to use the cell a, per your example, it would be: vec=str2num(a{1})
There are some security warnings in the documentation to consider so be cognizant of how your code is being employed.
Another, more flexible, option is textscan. It can handle strings as well as file handles.
Here's an example:
cellResult = textscan('1,2,3', '%f','delimiter',',');
vec = cellResult{1};
I will use the eval function to "evaluate" the vector. If that is the structure, I will also use the cell2mat to get the '1,2,3' text (this can be approached by other methods too.
% Generate the variable "a" that contains the "vector"
a = {'1,2,3'};
% Generate the vector using the eval function
myVector = eval(['[' cell2mat(a) ']']);
Let me know if this solution works for you

How to sum up all numbers in an array

I have an array which outputs the following:
charges = [5.00, 26.00, 8.00, 4.00, 4.00, -8.00, 54.00, 52.48]
When I try to perform a sum using this:
charges.sum()
It gives me:
5.0026.008.004.004.00-8.0054.0052.48
I am assuming I need to convert it from a string to a float so I did:
Float.valueOf((String) charges.sum())
and it gives me an error which states 'multiple points'.
My question is how do I add all of these figures up?
If your list is actually of strings, you can quickly do the conversion with sum()'s closure form.
charges.sum { it.toBigDecimal() }
It is unclear what your list has in it, it seems like the entries in your list are actually strings (since sum concatenates them), or something that prints a string value (has a toString method that returns a string showing the value so you think it is numeric even though it isn’t) . They are definitely not numeric, so convert each of them to a numeric type before summing:
charges.collect { new BigDecimal(it.toString()) }.sum()
(What your code was doing was concatenating the string values together, then converting that to a numeric type.)
You must delete the cast (String)
Float.valueOf(charges.sum())

How to convert List of arrays to two dimensional array?

I have a list of arrays where I added many arrays but all of them are the same size. Now I want convert this list to two dimensional array. I tried in this way:
List<Array^>^ vList = gcnew List<Array^>();
//some code where I add elements to vList
array<String ^, 2> ^ anArray = gcnew array<String ^, 2>(vList->Count, 5);
anArray = vList->ToArray();
But I have got this error:
a value of type "cli::array<System::Array ^, 1> ^" cannot be assigned to an entity of type "cli::array<System::String ^, 2> ^"
I don't know how to convert it.
You're going to have to iterate and copy all of the strings individually. However, the raw type Array^ isn't that convenient to work with, so you'll need to do something about that.
Basically, what you need to do is this:
for (int outer = 0; outer < vList->Count; outer++)
{
arrayOfSomeSort^ innerArray = vList[outer];
for (int inner = 0; inner < innerArray.Length; inner++)
anArray[outer, inner] = innerArray[inner];
}
Depending on how the rest of the program is, and what objects are actually in the List, there are a few options on what to do. Here are the options I see, in order of preference.
Instead of a List<Array^>^, have vList be a List<array<String^>^>^. If the List truly is a list of string arrays, then this option is probably the most correct. In this case, arrayOfSomeSort^ would be array<String^>^.
If vList can't change type, but it does indeed contain string arrays, then I'd have the local variable innerArray be of type array<String^>^, and do a cast as you pull it out of vList.
If the arrays in the list aren't string arrays, but instead are object arrays that happen to contain strings, then I'd have array<Object^>^ innerArray, and cast to that instead, and do a cast to String^ as you pull each string out of innerArray.
If none of those is appropriate, then you can leave innerArray as type Array^. You'll need to call the explicit method Array.GetValue(int) instead of using the [] indexer. As with the previous option, you'll need to cast each string as you pull it out of the inner array.
You've set the second dimension to 5 without checking the lengths of the inner arrays; I'm assuming you know something we don't, and are sure that there won't be anything larger than 5. If not, you'll need to iterate the list once to get the maximum array size, create the 2D array, and then copy the strings.

Ada Return Concatenated String of Strings

I am trying to finish up a homework assignment, and am down to the last part. First, I'll show you the type that I am dealing with:
TYPE Book_Collection IS
RECORD
Books : Book_Collection_Array;
Max_Size : Integer;
Size : Integer;
END RECORD;
TYPE Book_Type IS
RECORD
Title,
Author,
Publisher : Title_Str;
Year : Year_Type;
Edition : Natural;
Isbn : Isbn_Type;
Price : Dollars;
Stock : Natural;
Format : Format_Type;
END RECORD;
Book_Collection_Array is an array of book_type. These are private types, so the array is bounded (1..200).
There is a function called ToString in a separate package that was provided to us, that takes a book_type as input, and returns a string of all the elements of book_type. What I need to create is a function that takes book_collection is a parameter, and returns a string concatenating all of the strings that are returned by the ToString function that was provided, for the book_types that exist in that book_collection. I have made multiple attempts, but am constantly getting range check failures. Can anyone point me in the right direction?
*Edit:
Thank you to both of you for your help. I went the route of using an unbounded string, and appending each string to it, then declaring an output string and setting it as a constant string equal to the the To_String of the unbounded_string.*
I'll give you a hint.
Ada strings ideally aren't treated or handled much like C or Java strings at all. C strings count on a trailing nul (0) character to designate the end of data in a buffer. Java strings keep track of their own length, and will dynamically reallocate themselves to keep to the proper length if need be. So typical string-handling idioms in those languages think nothing of progressively modifying a string variable.
Ada strings instead are expected to be perfectly-sized when created. Most routines will assume that every element in a string array contains valid character data, and any destination string you assign data into will be perfectly sized to hold it. If that isn't the case, usually an exception is raised (and most likely your program crashes).
There are several ways to deal with this when you are building a string. One way is to create a really big string object as a buffer, and keep a separate length variable to tell your code how much data is really in there at all times. Then when you call Ada string routines you can feed them just the slice of data from the string that is valid. eg: Put_line (My_New_String(1..My_String_Length));
A better way is to just deal with perfectly-sized constant strings. For example, if you want to tack String1 and String2 together, the safe Ada way to do this is:
My_New_String : constant String := String1 & String2;
Then if you later want a string that is this string with String3 tacked on:
My_New_New_String : constant String := My_New_String & String3;
For more info on this, I suggest you look at some of the links over on the right side of this browser window under the heading "Related". I see a lot of good stuff in there.

repeat string with LINQ/extensions methods [duplicate]

This question already has answers here:
Is there an easy way to return a string repeated X number of times?
(21 answers)
Closed 9 years ago.
Just a curiosity I was investigating.
The matter: simply repeating (multiplying, someone would say) a string/character n times.
I know there is Enumerable.Repeat for this aim, but I was trying to do this without it.
LINQ in this case seems pretty useless, because in a query like
from X in "s" select X
the string "s" is being explored and so X is a char. The same is with extension methods, because for example "s".Aggregate(blablabla) would again work on just the character 's', not the string itself. For repeating the string something "external" would be needed, so I thought lambdas and delegates, but it can't be done without declaring a variable to assign the delegate/lambda expression to.
So something like defining a function and calling it inline:
( (a)=>{return " "+a;} )("a");
or
delegate(string a){return " "+a}(" ");
would give a "without name" error (and so no recursion, AFAIK, even by passing a possible lambda/delegate as a parameter), and in the end couldn't even be created by C# because of its limitations.
It could be that I'm watching this thing from the wrong perspective. Any ideas?
This is just an experiment, I don't care about performances, about memory use... Just that it is one line and sort of autonomous. Maybe one could do something with Copy/CopyTo, or casting it to some other collection, I don't know. Reflection is accepted too.
To repeat a character n-times you would not use Enumerable.Repeat but just this string constructor:
string str = new string('X', 10);
To repeat a string i don't know anything better than using string.Join and Enumerable.Repeat
string foo = "Foo";
string str = string.Join("", Enumerable.Repeat(foo, 10));
edit: you could use string.Concat instead if you need no separator:
string str = string.Concat( Enumerable.Repeat(foo, 10) );
If you're trying to repeat a string, rather than a character, a simple way would be to use the StringBuilder.Insert method, which takes an insertion index and a count for the number of repetitions to use:
var sb = new StringBuilder();
sb.Insert(0, "hi!", 5);
Console.WriteLine(sb.ToString());
Otherwise, to repeat a single character, use the string constructor as I've mentioned in the comments for the similar question here. For example:
string result = new String('-', 5); // -----
For the sake of completeness, it's worth noting that StringBuilder provides an overloaded Append method that can repeat a character, but has no such overload for strings (which is where the Insert method comes in). I would prefer the string constructor to the StringBuilder if that's all I was interested in doing. However, if I was already working with a StringBuilder, it might make sense to use the Append method to benefit from some chaining. Here's a contrived example to demonstrate:
var sb = new StringBuilder("This item is ");
sb.Insert(sb.Length, "very ", 2) // insert at the end to append
.Append('*', 3)
.Append("special")
.Append('*', 3);
Console.WriteLine(sb.ToString()); // This item is very very ***special***

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