Re: not enough real programmers?

[don@news.daedalus.co.nz (Don Stokes)]

Everett M. Greene <mojaveg@ridgecrest.ca.us> wrote:
>> 4.  "Write a program to perform a "perfect shuffle" on an array of 52
>> numbers." 
>
>Anybody with a good answer to question 4 doesn't need to be interviewing
>for a job.  There are any number of companies, academic institutions,
>etc. who would like a definitive answer to that problem.

Huh?  Assuming "perfect" means "within the parameters of he system's
random() function", 

	void
	shuffle(int array[52]) {
		int tmparray[52], done[52];
		int i,j;

		for(i = 0; i < 52; i++) {
			tmparray[i] = array[i];
			done[i] = 0;
		}
		for(i = 0; i < 52; i++) {
			for(j = random() % 52; done[j];) 
				if(++j == 52) j = 0;
			array[j] = tmparray[i];
			done[j] = 1;
		}
	}

works for me.  (It's much shorter if the routine is allowed to pick its
own values -- if I know the values are 1..52, I can use the target array
as my "done" array, and I don't need the temp array.  That's what I get
after five minutes of codiong, anyway.)

(do I get the job?)

-- don