WHAT DOES THIS FUNCTION RETURN

Question

1.00/5 (3 votes)

See more:

Can someone help? What doe this function return?

C#

function (return_number) {
!temp a,,i2
!temp b,,i2
!temp c,,i2
!temp i,,i2

    tmp.b=5
    tmp.a=2
    tmp.c = tmp.b - tmp.a
    if (tmp.c == 2) {
        tmp.c = 5
    } else {
        tmp.b = 7
    }

    for (tmp.i=0; tmp.i < tmp.c; tmp.i=tmp.i+1) {
        while (tmp.i>4) {
            if (tmp.i<7) {
                return tmp.i
            }
        }
    }
    return tmp.i
}

Posted 16-Apr-12 18:04pm

Dobrobit

Updated 17-Apr-12 2:54am

Pete O'Hanlon

v3

Add a Solution

Comments

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 17-Apr-12 0:38am

First of all, what language is this? Why all those language tags? Is it because you don't know yourself? :-)
--SA

JF2015 17-Apr-12 2:06am

This isn't even any type of C (C, C++, C#). So, please tag your question with the correct programming language.

3 solutions

Add a Solution

Add your solution here

Treat my content as plain text, not as HTML

Preview 0

…

Existing Members

Sign in to your account

...or Join us

Download, Vote, Comment, Publish.

Your Email
Password
Forgot your password?

Your Email
This email is in use. Do you need your password?
Optional Password

I have read and agree to the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy
Please subscribe me to the CodeProject newsletters

When answering a question please:

Read the question carefully.
Understand that English isn't everyone's first language so be lenient of bad spelling and grammar.
If a question is poorly phrased then either ask for clarification, ignore it, or edit the question and fix the problem. Insults are not welcome.
Don't tell someone to read the manual. Chances are they have and don't get it. Provide an answer or move on to the next question.

Let's work to help developers, not make them feel stupid.

This content, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The Code Project Open License (CPOL)

Pete O'Hanlon · Answer 1 · 2012-04-17T02:50:00

Let's start by breaking this down. First of all, I assume that the following section is defining some integers:

C#

!temp a,,i2
!temp b,,i2
!temp c,,i2
!temp i,,i2

Next, you are assigning values to them (and I assume that your initial use of temp is a mistype, as you change this to tmp further on). So, you set b to 5 and a to 2; then you subtract a from b and store that in c, so c is 3. This means that your if test drops into the tmp.b = 7 section. Following the rest of the logic, tmp.b isn't used anywhere else, and leads to a real logic bomb for you if you expect your while condition to execute.

What is the bomb? Well, assuming your logic is entirely correct, your for test loops from 0 to 2, so you never execute the inner logic of the while loop because tmp.i never reaches the condition where it will trigger. This means that tmp.i stops at 2, and that leads to the value you are returning.

You could have figured all this out for yourself just by writing it out. It's not that hard to work through a problem as simple as this.

Chris Ross 2 · Answer 2 · 2012-04-17T04:56:00

Solution 3

I'd say that function returns "one headache and years and years of trouble."

By which I mean: it will for ever be hard to determine whether the function is doing what it is intended to do because none of the variables have meaningful names.

Personally I would approach a mystery function like yours from the direction of "what is it supposed to do?" first, and only then would I seek to determine "does it do what is intended?".

Posted 17-Apr-12 4:56am

Chris Ross 2

Comments

Aescleal 17-Apr-12 12:59pm

Dunno who gave you the 1, but it's pretty good advice in general. Have a 5 to make up for it.

I have a feeling this is a bit of homework or an interview test question so the context won't be there.

Cheers,

Ash

egenis · Answer 3 · 2012-04-16T19:26:00

Solution 1

Easiest way to figure his out is to use a trace table or to implement the method and see what it returns.

Posted 16-Apr-12 19:26pm

egenis