C Increment and Decrement Operators
Programs coded with short-hand operators can run several milliseconds faster. Same as increment and decrement operators. They are — (minus minus) and ++ (plus plus). The following example shows the usage of these two operators:
x = y + z++; // z is incremented by one after x was calculated x = y + --z; // Decrement z by one first, then calculate x
In the above example, if y = 2 and z = 4:
x = 2 + 4++ => x = 6 (z has become 5, x doesn’t change since it’s already calculated)
x = 2 + –4 => x = 2 + 3 => x = 5 (z first decremented to 3, and then calculates x)
As you can see, the position of the operator is very important.
Here is the sample code for these operators:
/*
* inDecrement.c
*
* Program to illustrate the use of the increment
* and decrement operators
*
* by Mark Virtue, 2001.
*
*/
#include <stdio.h>
main() {
int x, y, z = 1;
y = 5;
x = 6;
puts(""); // Prints out a new line
printf("Before: x = %d, y = %d, z = %dn", x, y, z);
z = x++ + ++y; // First y is incremented to 6, and then z gets calculated to 12. Lastly, x is incremented to 7
puts("");
puts("z = x++ + ++y");
printf("After: x = %d, y = %d, z = %dn", x, y, z);
puts("");
printf("Before: x = %d, y = %d, z = %dn", x, y, z);
z = x++ - --y; // Same format as above
puts("");
puts("z = x++ - --y");
printf("After: x = %d, y = %d, z = %dn", x, y, z);
fflush(stdin);
getchar();
}
And here is the output for the above code:
Output for the above sample code. Click the image to enlarge.
If you have any question regarding the increment and decrement operators, leave a comment below.
Running Sims 3 under PlayOnLinux in Ubuntu Linux
Back when I was using Windows Vista years ago, I played The Sims 3 and other games for several hours. Once I switched to GNU/Linux, I got rid of these games when I failed to run them under Wine. However, for some reasons, I found a folder which stores The Sims 3 ISO file while cleaning and organize the hard drives today that I downloaded from a website that I don’t remember anymore. I searched over on the Wine database and found that the game and its expansion packs are in the gold state which I assume that it works very well on the GNU/Linux platform.
After searching around in the Ubuntu repositories, I discovered PlayOnLinux which is the front-end of Wine. I installed it and found out that there are almost all the Windows software and games that are pre-configured by PlayOnLinux. One thing that I discovered when I was running The Sims 3 under PlayOnLinux is that the sound would go out about one minute after running the game. The following is the solution that I came up with the help of this PlayOnLinux forum thread:
- Open the terminal and type playonlinux to run the GUI which you can add to the GNOME Menu manually with this command. Read this article on detailed instructions on how to do this.
- Install the game by clicking the Install button on the toolbar and follow the instruction.
- Run the game you installed. If it doesn’t have any sound problem, enjoy the program. Otherwise, go on to the next step.
- Follow the instruction on the first post of this thread under the FIX section.
- Instead of using last step on that thread, create a launcher on the desktop with the following information:
Type: Application
Name: The program name that you installed in step 2. In my case is Sims 3.
Command: padsp playonlinux –run “The Sims 3″
(Replace The Sims 3 with the program name that you want to run, note that this name must exactly the same with the name listed in the PlayOnLinux main window, otherwise it will fail to run)
Comment: Optional. You can add your own description. - You can add an unique icon by clicking the button on the left and select a JPG image.
- Click the launcher that you created and enjoy the game.
- You can also add this launcher to the GNOME menu by following the instruction from the link I provided in step 1.
If you have any problem for the above steps, leave a comment below and I will try to help as quick as possible. Note that I will not answer comments other than sound problem, especially the CD-related issue for the legal concern of my hosting provider.