1 Assignment Goals

1. Learn how to prepare and build C++ code on the Zoo.
2. Learn how to customize and use tools.cpp and tools.hpp in your own code.
3. Learn good practices for labeling every code file with appropriate date, authorship, and acknowledgments of code fragments taken from elsewhere.
4. Learn conventions used in this course regarding the fqorm of the main program, use of banner() and bye() from the tools library, compiler switches, include guards, and so forth.
5. Learn simple uses of C++ strings.
6. Learn how to do simple C++ I/O with validity check.
7. Learn how to use C library time functions from within C++.
8. Learn how to report a fatal error by throwing a Fatal() exception.
9. Learn how to test and submit your code on the Zoo.

2 Problem

You are to write a program called aboutme that, when run, prompts the user to enter their first name, last name, and year of birth. The program then prints out the first name, last name, and age, which we take to be the difference between the current year and the year of birth. Here’s what a sample run for me might look like:

The lines before the first prompt are printed by banner(). The lines after the age line are printed by bye().

3 Programming Notes

1. Copy the tools files from /c/cs427/code/tools/ into your working directory. Customize them by editing in your own name in place of the generic “Ima Goetting Closeau”. Be sure to submit your tools files along with your code and other required files. Read Chapter 1 of the textbook for more information about tools, but be warned that my version of tools differs somewhat from what is in the textbook.
2. Your main function should be exactly as follows:
   int main() {  
       banner();  
       try {  
           run();  
       }  
       catch (Fatal& e) {  
           cerr << "Catching Fatal exception\n" << e.what() << endl;  
       }  
       catch (...) {  
           cerr << "Uncaught exception" << endl;  
       }  
       bye();  
   }

   Your own code will go into the file main.cpp before and/or after function main(). You will need to define the function run().

   We will study later how the try and catch blocks work. This code as written will catch any exceptions thrown by run() or by any function that run() calls. A statement inside run() of the form throw Fatal(format, data1, data2, …) will be caught by the first catch block and will cause the same string to be printed as printf(format, data1, data2, …) would print in C. For example,

   throw Fatal("Can’t open file %s", "data.in");

   would cause the two lines to be printed:

   Catching Fatal exception
   Can’t open file data.in

3. You should use the standard C++ iostreams facility for your I/O. To use it, one must #include the header file iostream. tools.hpp already does this for you, so all you need in main.cpp is the statement #include "tools.hpp". The standard input stream is cin; the standard output stream is cout. The input operator is >>; the output operator is <<. Further information and examples are in the textbook.
4. There are two ways to store a string in C++. First is as a char array as one does in C. The other is to use the standard string library. To use it, you must #include the header file string in your code. (tools.hpp already does this for you.) This makes string available as a new type, which you can then use to declare variables and parameters.

   A variable of type string acts just like one would expect. You can store a string literal of any length into it. You can copy one string to another using the assignment operator. You can print it using the << operator and read a whitespace-delimited string into it using the >> operator. A string manages its own storage so that you do not have to worry about allocating storage. You should use string variables to store the first and last names to be read in.

5. Compute the current year by using the standard C library functions time() and localtime(). time() reads the clock and returns a value of type time_t that is the number of seconds since the beginning of year 1970. To find the year from a time_t value, use localtime() to create a struct tm broken-down data structure. This contains an int field called tm_year that sounds like it ought to be the year (like 2016), but it’s actually the year minus 1900. To use these functions in C++, you would #include the header file ctime. (This is the C++ version of the C header file time.h and is included by tools.hpp.)
6. Use the sample Makefile from lecture 2, modified if necessary.
7. Submit this assignment following the submission instructions from lecture 2.

4 Grading Rubric

Your assignment will be graded according to the scale given in Figure 1 (see below).