Description
You are to write a simple scheduling program for this project.
When you start the program, it will display the following menu:
cbowen@ubuntu:~/workspace251/Scheduler/Debug$ ./Scheduler
1 – Insert a new event
2 – Display all events
3 – Now?
4 – Delete expired
0 – Exit
Please select an option:
If the user enters a zero, the program exits.
Menu Options
The following sections describe each of the menu options.
1 – Insert a new event
When this menu option is selected, the user enters an event like this:
Please select an option: 1
What is the event: CSE 251
Event date: 4/14/2011
Start time: 3:00pm
End time: 4:50pm
The event description is up to 50 characters and many include spaces. The date is in the form indicated: month/day/year. The user must use a
full year (2011) as opposed to a 2 character year (11). Also, only dates after 1970 are valid in the time system we will use. The start time and end
time are in 12 hour format with hours and minutes only. See the section on Dates and Times for details on how to input and utilize this
information in the program.
When a new event is inserted it should be tested against all other events and an overlap indicated if one occurs. Two events A and B do not
overlap if A ends before B starts or A starts after B ends. Here is an example of the output should an overlap occur:
Please select an option: 1
What is the event: Afternoon Tea
Event date: 4/14/2011
Start time: 4:00pm
End time: 4:15pm
Warning, this event overlaps:
CSE 251
Overlapping events are not rejected, they are entered into the system. The warning message should include all events that overlap the newly
entered event. The warning message must only appear if an overlap exists.
2 – Display all events
When this menu options is selected, all events are displays in start time order. Example output is:
Schedule:
4/14/2011 3:00PM 4:50PM CSE 251
4/14/2011 4:00PM 4:15PM Afternoon Tea
3 – Now?
When the Now menu option is selected, any events that are currently active should be displayed. An event is currently active if the current time
is greater than or equal to the start time and less than or equal to the end time. As an example:
Projects in CSE 251 are individual activities. You may not collaborate or work with any other students on
the projects. You may, of course, contact course staff with questions or for help. But, your work must be
entirely your own.
In this document I have included some sample functions from the reference solution. You are welcome to
use these functions in your solution. Do not assume they can always be pasted directly without
modification due to the variable names or data structures you have chosen to use.
CSE 251 Project 3: A Scheduling Program
2/6
Please select an option: 3
Currently active events:
Prepare for CSE 251
4 – Delete expired
If this menu option is selected, any events that have expired, meaning they ended before the current time, are deleted from the scheduler. The
deleted events should be displayed:
Please select an option: 4
Deleting:
4/14/2011 12:00PM 1:00PM Lunch
If there is nothing to delete, the program should indicate that there are no expired events:
Please select an option: 4
No expired events
Robust and Safe Input
All program input must be robust and safe. If a user enters an invalid value, ask again. There should be no way to crash the program or get it to
behave in strange ways with invalid input. Some examples:
If someone enters a bad menu option, it should request the menu option again.
If someone enters a bad date or time, it should request the date or time again.
You do not need to have detailed error messages other than requesting the option again.
Dates and Times
This program makes use of C language features for dates and times. There are several ways the C represents a date and time. The two most
common are time_t and struct tm.
time_t
The most basic representation of a date and time is the type time_t. The value of a time_t variable is the number of seconds since January 1,
1970, sometimes call the Unix epoch. This is the best way to internally represent the start and end times for an event because it is easy to
compare these values. Two time_t values a and b can be compared using <:
if(a < b) { printf(“Time a is before time b\n”); } struct tm While time_t represents a date and time as a single number, struct tm represents it as a struct with a lot of numbers: struct tm { int tm_sec; /* Seconds. [0-60] (1 leap second) */ int tm_min; /* Minutes. [0-59] */ int tm_hour; /* Hours. [0-23] */ int tm_mday; /* Day. [1-31] */ int tm_mon; /* Month. [0-11] */ int tm_year; /* Year – 1900. */ int tm_wday; /* Day of week. [0-6] */ int tm_yday; /* Days in year.[0-365] */ int tm_isdst; /* DST. [-1/0/1]*/ }; Conversion You can convert a time_t value to a struct tm value using the localtime function: struct tm startTM; time_t start; It is recommended that you use a time_t value to represent the start date and time of the event and another to represent the end date and time. It is much easier to represent the date and time together than to have different values for them. 15/10/2021 CSE 251 Project 3: A Scheduling Program https://www.cse.msu.edu/~cse251/project3.html 3/6 /* … */ startTM = *localtime(&start); You can convert a struct tm value to a time_t value using the mktime function: struct tm startTM; time_t start; /* … */ start = mktime(&startTM); You will see examples of the functions in the code below. How to input a date Your program will need to input a date. Here is an example of a safe and robust way to input a date: time_t InputDate(char *prompt) { char buffer[100]; char *result; struct tm date; do { printf(“%s”, prompt); /* Get a line of up to 100 characters */ fgets(buffer, sizeof(buffer), stdin); /* Remove any \n we may have input */ if(strlen(buffer) > 0)
buffer[strlen(buffer)-1] = ‘\0’;
result = strptime(buffer, “%m/%d/%Y”, &date);
} while(result == NULL);
/* Convert to time_t format */
date.tm_min = 0;
date.tm_hour = 0;
date.tm_sec = 0;
date.tm_isdst = 1;
return mktime(&date);
}
This function asks the user for a time with the given prompt. If the time is correctly entered, it converts it to type time_t, expressing a time and
date of 12:00am on the entered date.
In order to use the strptime function, you will need to #include . However, you must preceed the #include with this code:
#define __USE_XOPEN
#include
Any time you #include in your program, use the line #define __USE_XOPEN before it. Note that it begins with two underlines.
How to input a time
After entering the date, you can enter a time using this safe and robust function:
time_t InputTime(char *prompt, time_t date)
{
char buffer[100];
char *result;
struct tm time;
time = *localtime(&date);
do
{
printf(“%s”, prompt);
/* Get a line of up to 100 characters */
15/10/2021 CSE 251 Project 3: A Scheduling Program
https://www.cse.msu.edu/~cse251/project3.html 4/6
fgets(buffer, sizeof(buffer), stdin);
/* Remove any \n we may have input */
if(strlen(buffer) > 0)
buffer[strlen(buffer)-1] = ‘\0’;
result = strptime(buffer, “%I:%M%p”, &time);
} while(result == NULL);
return mktime(&time);
}
This function is passed a date expressed as a time_t value, the output of the InputDate function. The time is entered and added to the date to
produce a date and time value that is returned. Here is an example of how these functions can be used to input a date, start time, and end time.
time_t date;
time_t start;
time_t end;
/*…*/
date = InputDate(“Event date: “);
start = InputTime(“Start time: “, date);
end = InputTime(“End time: “, date);
How to output a time_t value.
To output a time or date, you convert it to a struct tm:
struct tm startTM;
time_t start;
/* … */
startTM = *localtime(&start);
Once converted, the value in struct tm are:
struct tm
{
int tm_sec; /* Seconds. [0-60] (1 leap second) */
int tm_min; /* Minutes. [0-59] */
int tm_hour; /* Hours. [0-23] */
int tm_mday; /* Day. [1-31] */
int tm_mon; /* Month. [0-11] */
int tm_year; /* Year – 1900. */
int tm_wday; /* Day of week. [0-6] */
int tm_yday; /* Days in year.[0-365] */
int tm_isdst; /* DST. [-1/0/1]*/
};
Now I can get the hour in the example as startTM.tm_hour. There are a couple strange things about this struct. To get the actual year, use
startTM.tm_year + 1900. To get the actual month number, use startTM.tm_mon + 1.
The function ctime
The function ctime converts a time_t value into a string of the following form:
Thu Apr 14 14:00:00 2011
This is a handy way to test to see if a time is what you expect. For example, if I have a variable: time_t timeDate and want to know what its
value is, I can add this code while debugging:
printf(“The date/time is %s\n”, ctime(&timeDate));
This is also the easiest way to save the start date/time and end date/time to a file.
Reading the output of ctime
You are required to output a date in the form: 4/15/2011. This is month/day/year. You are required to
output a time in the form: 12:35AM. Note that the hour in struct tm is in 24 hour time. You will need to
convert the time to 12 hour time. There is no function to do this. You must do this conversion yourself.
15/10/2021 CSE 251 Project 3: A Scheduling Program
https://www.cse.msu.edu/~cse251/project3.html 5/6
To read the output of ctime from a file and convert it back to a time_t value, use this code:
struct tm tim;
time_t startTime;
fgets(buffer, sizeof(buffer), file);
strptime(buffer, “%a %b %d %H:%M:%S %Y”, &tim);
startTime = mktime(&tim);
This inputs the date/time string from a file into the character string buffer. It then used strptime to convert it to a struct tm structure. Then the
funciton mktime converts the struct tm value to a time_t value.
File I/O
File I/O is optional this semester due to time constraints. If you want to look at it and/or implement the File I/O portion, click here to display it.
Program Organization
You must make your program modular. Do not put the entire program in one .c file. Use at least two different .c file (three if you implement File
I/O), grouping functions into files and headers in logical ways (my reference solution used 4). For example, my solution has a file.c and file.h that
contains the functions for file input and output and a display.c and display.h that contains the functions to display the schedule and events.
Include a Makefile to built your program. Your Makefile must include a clean target.
Additional Requirements
You are not allowed to use global variables in this project. Repeat: no global variables are allowed in this project.
The easiest solution for passing around the schedule is to put it into a struct. Then you can pass it by reference like this:
void DisplayEvents(Schedule *schedule)
{
int i;
printf(“\nSchedule:\n”);
for(i=0; inumEvents; i++)
{
DisplayEvent(&schedule->events[i]);
}
printf(“\n”);
}
Hints and Suggestions
It is much easier to always keep the events in order by start time than to try to sort them when they are displayed.
You can use linked lists for this assignment, but using an array created using malloc and expanded using realloc as we did in the transistors step
assignment is probably easier.
It is easiest to just overwrite the schedule file when the schedule changes rather than trying to update the file.
Write one thing at a time and get it working. Don’t write a lot of code and then try to get it to compile and then try to get it to run. You probably
never will get it to work. Do as little at a time as you can. For example, I started out with a menu that only had one item in it and got that to work
first. Some of the other functions I just tested by themselves until I had them working, then moved on to other things.
Testing using an input data file
It can get very tedious inputting events over and over again as you test the program. You can create a test input file containing all of the
keystrokes you would do on input and use this for testing. For example, I created a file named input.dat with this content:
1
CSE 251
4/28/2011
3:00pm
4:50pm
1
Example Event
4/29/2011
1:00pm
2:00pm
2
0
To use this, I run the scheduler program like this:
l 6/6
cbowen@ubuntu:~/workspace251/Scheduler$ ./scheduler <input.dat
The < sign means get the input from this file instead of the keyboard. Now, this looks a bit strange as you run it, but it saves a lot of keystrokes.
Since the file does not echo to the terminal, you won’t see the input. Here’s what my run looks like for this test input file:
cbowen@ubuntu:~/workspace251/Scheduler$ ./scheduler <input.dat
1 – Insert a new event
2 – Display all events
3 – Now?
4 – Delete expired
0 – Exit
Please select an option: What is the event: Event date: Start time: End time: 1 – Insert a new event
2 – Display all events
3 – Now?
4 – Delete expired
0 – Exit
Please select an option: What is the event: Event date: Start time: End time: 1 – Insert a new event
2 – Display all events
3 – Now?
4 – Delete expired
0 – Exit
Please select an option:
Schedule:
4/28/2011 3:00PM 4:50PM CSE 251
4/29/2011 1:00PM 2:00PM Example Event
1 – Insert a new event
2 – Display all events
3 – Now?
4 – Delete expired
0 – Exit
Please select an option: Thank you for using the scheduler
Be sure you send your data file with a zero like I did so the program exits. Otherwise, your program will loop forever expecting input that never
arrives:
ase select an option: Please select an option: Please select an option: Please
select an option: Please select an option: Please select an option: Please sel
ect an option: Please select an option: Please select an option: Please select
an option: Please se^C
You can prevent this from happening if you will add this code to the loop where you input the menu option:
if(feof(stdin))
return 0;
The feof function tests for the end of the file on the standard input. If we are at the end of the file (no more input), this returns the zero menu
option and the program exits. You may need to use this in other places as well if you run into debugging problems.
Submission
When you are done, do the following:
A: Do a make clean to remove the executable and intermediate object files.
B: Type these commands, assuming your project is in a folder scheduler:
cd ..
tar cvzf project3.tar.gz scheduler
This will create a file project3.tar.gz. This is the file you will turn in.
Turn in project3.tar.gz via http://www.cse.msu.edu/handin.
CSE 251
