Description
Question 1: You are a diamond!
AASCI art is a classical way to show off your newfound programming ability. It means using the terminal
printing abilities of your program to do something useful (or just to have fun, which is more our focus
here).
Part A) Simple Diamond – 20 marks
Create the C program q1a_simple_diamond.c to produce a program which takes 1 argument, the height
H of the diamond. Prints a diamond which is made up of H rows of asterisk (a.k.a. star, *) characters and
spaces following this specification:
• The diamond’s top and bottom rows must both be a single asterisk (same line if H=1)
• Subsequent rows must grow or shrink by 2 asterisks, according to the overall shape
• A single row in the middle of the diamond must have exactly H asterisks (no spaces in this one)
• The first asterisk in the middle row must appear at the very beginning of the line
• The asterisks in all rows must be perfectly centered with respect to the middle row
Your program is never allowed to segmentation fault, no matter how it is run. To prevent this, input
checking must be performed:
• The program needs exactly one argument after the program name, no more and no less.
Otherwise print: “ERROR: Wrong number of arguments. One required.”
• The height argument must be a positive integer and odd (ensures the overall shape works).
Otherwise print: “ERROR: Bad argument. Height must be positive odd integer.”
Part B) Sierpiński Diamond – 40 marks
A fractal refers to a recursively defined shape, such that infinite variations are possible at increasingly
smaller scales. One such is known as the Sierpiński Triangle, and we will make our next diamond from two
of these vertically mirrored. More information at: Wikipedia.
Create a second C program, q1b_sierpinski_diamond.c, which prints a modified diamond, such that each
of the top and bottom half are Sierpiński Triangles. Your program should take two arguments: the height
of the diamond, H, and the fractal level, L. Again, the diamond has a precise format:
• The level L=1 diamond must be identical to the simple diamond with the given height, H.
• For each level beyond 1, you must sub-divide top and bottom triangles using Sierpiński’s rule.
Replace a H/2 triangle whose tip touches the bottom of the original with spaces. This leaves 3
triangles, each with height H/2 and level L-1, one above the missing triangle, and two beside it.
• We must continue recursively sub-dividing each remaining triangle until we reach level L=1.
Your program is never allowed to segmentation fault, no matter how it is run. To prevent this, input
checking must be performed:
• Height H must meet all the same conditions as above, with the same error messages.
• Height H must allow us to perfectly divide the triangle each time. This means that
tri_height=ceil(H/2) must be a power of 2, with tri_height >= 2
L-1
. Otherwise print “ERROR: Height
does not allow evenly dividing requested number of levels.”
Question 2 Wiki Browsing – 40 marks
Wikipedia is a community developed encyclopedia that contains loads of useful information, if you know
how to navigate it properly. You must create a C program, called q2_extract_wiki_links.c, that parses
pages from the site Wikipedia using C’s text processing functions found in . Print the names of
all links to other Wikipedia pages that you find to the terminal. Those links appear in this form:
easy to read description
You must match the bold text, but elements in italics can be anything. Please note that PageName is just
an example. The real name will be something meaningful like Chicken. All of the following are valid:
• Chicken
• Chickens
• poultry
However, the following should not be matched (because something in the bold part is incorrect):
• Chicken (this is a link to a normal website off Wikipedia)
• Chicken (missing the title= section)
If your program works, every PageName printed should mean https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageName
is a valid web page. You can follow several of them to test, and see where your searches get you, e.g.,
$ gcc q2_extract_wiki_links.c
$ wget https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animal_names
$ ./a.out List_of_animal_names
Main_Page
Special:MobileLanguages/List_of_animal_names
Young_Animal_(DC_Comics)
Animal_epithet
File:Mother_sea_otter_with_sleeping_pup.jpeg
Sea_otter
Morro_Bay
Animal
Male
Female
Book_of_St._Albans
Juliana_Berners
Taxa
Family_(biology)
Class_(biology)
Clade
Female
Male
Collective_noun
Collateral_adjective
Binomial_nomenclature#History
Aves
Chicken
Bird
Bovinae
Herd
(output truncated)
$ wget https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bird
$ ./a.out Bird
Wikipedia:Featured_articles
Wikipedia:Protection_policy#semi
File:Bird_(Intro).ogg
Bird_(disambiguation)
Birds_(disambiguation)
Aves_(disambiguation)
Avifauna_(disambiguation)
Early_Cretaceous
Holocene
Precambrian
Cambrian
Ordovician
Silurian
Devonian
Carboniferous
Permian
Triassic
Jurassic
Cretaceous
(output truncated)
$ wget https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jurassic
$ ./a.out Jurassic_Park
File:Jurassic_spoken_article.ogg
Precambrian
Cambrian
Ordovician
Silurian
Devonian
Carboniferous
Permian
Triassic
Cretaceous
Paleogene
Neogene
Oxygen
Carbon_dioxide
Parts_per_million
Template:Jurassic_graphical_timeline
Mesozoic
Triassic
Cretaceous
Early_Jurassic
Middle_Jurassic
Late_Jurassic
Hettangian
Sinemurian
(output truncated)
Jurassic_Park
(output truncated)
