What type of programming is this?

Question

I just finished taking an entry placement test for computer science as in college. I passed, but missed a bunch of questions in a specific category: variable assignment. I want to make sure I understand this before moving on.

It started out with easy things, like "set age equal to age"

int age = 18, pretty simple

But then, it had a question which I had no clue how to approach. It went something like...

"Determine if character c is is in alphabet and assign to a variable"

I could easily do that with a function, but the issue is, it gave me literally a line to write my entire answer (so about 50 characters max). Here is how the answer box looked:

enter image description here

My first thought was to do something like

in_alphabet = function(c) {
  var alphabet = ["a", "b" ... "z"]
  if(alphabet.indexOf(c) != -1)
      return true;
}

But this solution has two issues:

How can I set the "c" value when the whole function is equal to in_alphabet?
I can't fit this into the small answer box. I am 99% sure they were looking for something else. Does anybody know what they were looking for? I can't think of a one line solution for this

Language doesn't matter (although a solution in java/c++ would be preferred). I would appreciate any guidance (doesn't have to be a solution, I just don't even know where to begin)

score 0 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:58

0

I copied straight from How to check if character is a letter in Javascript?

in_alphabet = c.length === 1 && c.match(/[a-z]/i)? str : ""

edited May 23 '17 at 11:58

Community

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answered Jul 14 '15 at 15:03

rassa45

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Thanks for the answer, but it doesn't quite answer my question because it needs to be a one line variable assignment. I can't fit that on the line they provided. – Shivang Saxena Jul 14 '15 at 15:03
I made it much better for you – rassa45 Jul 14 '15 at 15:19
Assuming we have a variable named str – rassa45 Jul 14 '15 at 15:20

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 14 '15 at 15:05

The question "Determine if character c is is in alphabet and assign to a variable" does not ask you to create a function (although in many languages this would be the best way to do this).

In R you could do something like:

inAlphabet <- c %in% letters

So you can certainly do it in one line in some real-world languages. Note that letters is a built-in list of characters.

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 14 '15 at 15:07

0

It's a VBA solution and returns C in the variable:

LetterC = Mid("ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ", InStr("ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ", "C"), 1)

Is that what you're after?

answered Jul 14 '15 at 15:07

Darren Bartrup-Cook

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sgbj · Answer 4 · 2015-07-14T15:18:20.327

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Many languages have a data type that represents a single character, and they often can be compared using binary operators like < > <= >=, wherein the characters are compared numerically.

So something like this should suffice:

in_alphabet = c >= 'a' && c <= 'z'

And some languages already have built in methods to do things similar to this (e.g., Character.isLetter).

edited Jul 14 '15 at 15:18

answered Jul 14 '15 at 15:11

sgbj

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score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Jul 14 '15 at 15:29

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In Java, Character.isLetter(c)
In .NET, Char.IsLetter(c)

Perhaps you were being tested on knowledge of basic data types and some of the facilities they provide.

answered Jul 14 '15 at 15:29

Jay

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What type of programming is this?

5 Answers5