[LCP]Larger programming tasks?

[Greg Black]

Marcin Jendrzejewski wrote:

| I'm just curious what suggestions people have for a larger programming
| task in C/C++.  I guess I'm aiming here for about 1000-2000 lines of
| code.

That's still a pretty small program.

If it's just for an exercise, browse the Unix man pages and
select some program that you think you understand and write it
from scratch, using the man page as your specification and the
Unix program as your verification -- the same inputs should get
the same results in the same time.  Naturally, you lose if you
read the Unix source first.

I'd try cat first -- it's astonishing just how many people who
claim to be C programmers just can't manage that.  When you've
mastered cat, move on to ed.  Those two programs cover a large
subset of the stuff you need to be proficient in.  Then write a
couple of network programs using sockets -- a client and a
server to implement a simple protocol such as a stripped down
SMTP server would be a good thing to try.

And then start thinking about things you actually want to work
on.  The Linux and BSD and GNU developers are all crying out for
volunteers to do a bit of coding in their free time.

Greg