CISC 105 Lab 08 FAQ

For each of the following questions, I'll give suggestions for "troubleshooting" the problem.

Notes from Sara:

COMMENTS! You should include high-level descriptions for both your programs and your functions.

Refer to the C coding standards to remind yourself what we expect of your code. ALIGN CODE and HAVE GOOD STYLE. I'm taking off mucho points for code that's hard to read. Name your variables and functions well. You have had plenty of warning.

How do I run gnuplot?

Type gnuplot [name_of_gnuplot_cmds_file].

For the first gnuplot we need to do with the number of days in each month, I can't get the title _Num of Days to come down to the bottom of the picture like in the example. It is stuck at the top. Do you know what I did wrong?

It may be the system that I created the plot on has different defaults. If you add set key below to the gnuplot commands script, it should work.

Could you give me a hint on how to start counting how many times I generate a number?

So, the array starts at all 0s. You start generating random numbers. If you generate, say, a 3. You want to add 1 to the array at index 3. If you generate a 5, you want to add 1 ot the array at index 5, etc.

Are we supposed to write a program in C that actually generates the data files?

Yes, write a C program to do it. You already generated the output in program 0. Now, you want to put the output in the appropriate gnuplot data format in a file. You may need to look in your book about how to write data to files.

Is it okay if I have one program for creating the data file and simply change the constants and create a new data file for each new set of random numbers or do I need to do all four in the same program?

Either way is fine. If you go with the former, comment that you changed the constant to generate the other data files.

I am having a hard time getting the title to appear on my gnuplot graphs for the random numbers. The set key below command doesn't work. Should I just put the tile in the html file where I put all four graphs or is there something I can change in the gnuplot file?

Does the title not show up at all or not in the right place? Maybe your title is too long. Try something shorter (just "FC" for frequency count, for now) to see what happens there. The key is actually different than the title. The key is just a label for the the lines (like "frequency count"); the title should be a little more descriptive and mention how many total numbers were generated.

We put all 4 graphs on the one html page right? What about links to get to these pages?

The title should also go in the HTML file. There should be 4 graphs on one Web page. You don't need to link to the page. I'll be looking for "http://copland.udel.edu/~userid/cisc105/lab08" If the web page isn't there or isn't accessible, then there's trouble.

For part 2 program 0, you want us to generate 10 random numbers and store them in an array?

No, the random numbers themselves are not stored in the array. The array keeps track of the number of times each random number occurs, i.e., the sum total of the final array should be 10 (or however many numbers were generated).

Submission clarification: there should be one C Program to submit if I'm reading right (it says submit 2).

There are two C programs to submit: Program 0 and Program 1 on the lab description. Program 0 is an intermediate step to Program 1.

gnuplot clarification

There are three types of gnuplot files: