[Courses] [C] Next C topic: Your Choice

[Laurel Fan]

On Thu, Jul 18, 2002 at 12:27:32PM -0400, Cynthia Grossen wrote:
> Are there any useful programs we can write to do things on our systems at
> home? Maybe a program that would perform some onerous system task that
> usually requires a bunch of commands. I vaguely remember writing C prgs at
> school that would report memory usage and things of that ilk about my
> computer.

Maybe this is too stereotypically feminine, but:

When I cook at home, I usually cook for one, so I usually end up
having to scale down recipes.  A program in which you can enter the
original quantities from a recipe and a scale factor, and get the
scaled up/down quantities, would be useful for me.  Other possible
features:

- try be smart about the output format and units
  ie. say "2 teaspoons" instead of or in addition to "0.6667
  Tablespoon" (or whatever the actual conversion factor is)

- english to metric conversion and vice versa

- allow the user to specify what measuring units they actually have
  ie. if I've lost some of my measuring spoons, and only have a 1/2
  tablespoon, output something like "2 teaspoons (1 1/3 x 1/2
  tablespoon)"

- allow the user to specify an ingredient as the limiting factor
  ie. I have 3 bananas, and I want to use them all to make banana
  bread.  How much can I make, and how much of the other ingredients do
  I need?

-- 
laurel at sdf.lonestar.org
http://dreadnought.gorgorg.org