String Class – Testing and Release

The String class is contained in the source files string.h (class definition) and string.cpp (functions). A test_string program was written to test the functions implemented so far. The ibcp_0.0.2-src.zip file has been uploaded at Sourceforge IBCP Project. Also included is a test_nums program written to test the conversion of strings to numeric values (integers and doubles) that will be needed by the Parser for dealing with numeric constants. The .zip file contains all the files so far, however, no make files have been included.

A word about the development environment, which has changed slightly. I was able to get GCC 4.4.0 (a very recent version) using MinGW to work with VIDE2, so this will be used instead of Borland's C++ 5.5 Command Line tools. I also discovered there are some differences between the two in the names of library functions. For instance, Borland uses strcmpi and strncmpi for case insensitive comparison functions, where as GCC (LIBC) uses strcasecmp and strncasecmp. Allowing compilation for both, while not impossible, will be more work.

A note about make files, when switching projects in VIDE2, it must be told to rebuild the makefile since it does not do this automatically. VIDE2 continues to use the current Makefile.v file, no matter which project is loaded. To avoid confusion in the release files, only the VIDE2 project files will be be included. The Makefile.v file will be automatically generated for the first project loaded into VIDE2 if not present. Loading other projects after this requires use of the Project/Rebuild Makefile menu command.

One last note, while VIDE2 is being used to create and build the programs, I really don't like the built-in editor. While it does contain a Vi mode (my favorite programming text editor), VIDE2's Vi mode is just subset of the real Vi. Further, Vi is a subset of Vim (Vi IMproved) that I have used for years on Linux. I got tired of VIDE2 telling that the command I was trying to use was not supported. So instead I am using gVim (available at www.vim.org), which has a Windows version (Vim can also be installed with MSYS). This is the reason there is a “vim:ts=4:sw=4” at the beginning of each source file within a comment, which tells Vim to set the tab stop length at 4 characters (my preference).