CS 170 - Programming Assignment #2

Observations: Many students are forgetting that arrays in C/C++ are zero-based, meaning, if you have an array of 5 boats, you'd better only index that array with 0 through 4. Students are indexing that array using the BoatID (1 through 5), which is the cause of 99.9% of the problems. Remember, overwriting an array means your program is undefined (broken), which (unfortunately) usually means it will work for you on your machine with simple tests, but won't work for me when I test it. The same is true when doing bounds-checking to see if the boat or shot is outside of the array (ocean). So, please, please, please pay attention to the details when indexing an array.

The sample driver is just that, a sample. Just because you pass all of the tests in that simple driver doesn't necessarily mean your code is perfect. Several people had incorrect output or crashes because they failed to check the coordinates of the boats or shots correctly. The problem is that they failed to check if the coordinates were negative. They were checking that the coordinates were less than the x and y dimensions, but they didn't check to make sure the coordinates weren't less than 0. Many students failed to do this. Double-check your checks!