# 4.3. A Creative Problem Solution¶

Thus far the exercises and examples suggested have been of a very simple form, where the idea of the steps should have been pretty clear, and the main issue was just translating syntax into C#, one instruction at a time.

We still have a lot of syntax to concentrate on, but still, early on, we wanted to get in some real thought of problem solving. To get very interesting you need a number of options that might be combined in a variety of ways. The short list of string methods just introduced is likely give us enough to think about....

Here is a basic string manipulation problem: given a string, like, "It was the best of times.", find and replace a specified part of it by another string. For instance replace "best" by "worst". In this example we would get the result: "It was the worst of times.".

It is very important to give concrete examples to illustrate the idea desired. Our human brains may be very quick to see a solution like this in a very concrete case, but what about making it general?

First this seems like a basic logical operation worthy of a function or method, so we need a heading. (Confession: there are methods in the class string for replacement, but this is a good learning exercise, so we are starting over on our own.) Since we cannot change the string class, we will write a static function to generate the new string.

For simplicity at the moment we will only change the first occurrence, and for now we will assume the replacement makes sense. The following heading (with documentation) should work:

/// Return s with the first occurence of target
/// replaced by replacement.
static string replaceFirst(string s, string target,
string replacement)


As soon as we have the calling interface, it is good to be thinking of the tests it should pass. Here is a Main program written to test the function in different ways and display the results:

static void Main ()
{
string str1 = "It was the best of times.";
string str2 = "Of times it was the best.";
Console.WriteLine("str1=" + str1);
Console.WriteLine("str2=" + str2);
Console.WriteLine();
// to embed a quote inside a string constant, precede it by backslash(\).
Console.WriteLine("Let us do some \"cutting and pasting\" of strings!");
string str3 = replaceFirst(str1, "best", "worst");
Console.WriteLine("str3 = str1 with best => worst: " + str3);
string str4 = replaceFirst(str2, "best", "worst");
Console.WriteLine("str2 with best => worst: " + str4);
string str5 = replaceFirst(str3, "worst", "best");
Console.WriteLine("str3 with worst => best: " + str5);
}


Writing tests first is a good idea to focus you on what really needs to be accomplished, and then running tests later is a snap!

The human brain and eyes are fabulous in the way they process many things in parallel and use tools you have accumulated over a lifetime. In particular this substitution idea should seem pretty reasonable, and given any specific concrete example, you are likely to be able to solve it instantly, with very little conscious effort. Once it becomes a programming problem, with parameters stated in general, with just placeholder names like s and target, and given the limited set of approaches you have in a programming language, then the complexion of this problem changes completely. Many students guess the general problem will be nearly as simple as the concrete examples they do in their heads, and then get very discouraged when the answer does not flow out of them. In fact it takes practice and experience, and it is easier to handle if you acknowledge that up front!

So let’s start in with the practice, and gain some experience. With s, target, and replacement all being general, this problem could easily be too much to contemplate at once, so let us replace concrete examples by generality gradually. The idea is to get to the end. Rather than trying to jump a chasm, we can take small steps and go around.

A basic idea is to make small incremental changes, test at each stage, and gradually see more of the tests (that you have already written) be satisfied. Also, if you make a mistake and screw up something that worked before, you can generally focus on the small addition to see where the mistakes were. [1]

This also avoids you needing to keep too much in your head at once.

We do have code written already: The test code. Start by writing something that will trivially satisfy the first concrete test. The body of the function can be just:

return "It was the worst of times";


This is a tiny, easy, silly looking step, but it does accomplish two things: It makes sure we can produce output in the proper string form, and the test code runs, passing the first test.

Now we gradually get more complicated. We will continue to assume target and replacement are as in the original example, and target is in the same place in s, but suppose we imagine each of the other characters in s may be something different:

"???????????best??????????"


Now we have to start thinking about what we have to work with. We have a string, and we have string methods. Have a look at the ideas of each method (exact syntax not important at the moment). Clearly we are going to have to deal with parts of strings, and the methods to deal with parts involve indices, so let us add to our visual model:

Index: 0123456789012345678901234
s: ???????????best??????????


Continue in class.... The example program stub is string_manip_stub/string_manip.cs.

In general, when given a project with “stub” in it, you should copy the files into a project of your own and make modifications. Though the original version should compile and run, it does not do much without your additions. In stubs where you need to complete a function with a return value, you will often see a dummy choice for the return statement, just so the stub compiles. Where the return type is string "Not implemented" is a handy temporary choice.

When you have that function version, test it. You will need to rename our incremental variations so the current version has the name used in Main.

What might further advances toward full generality be, in small steps? We pinned best at a specific location. We could remove that assumption. The location will still be important, but we do not know it ahead of time....

A further advance would be a version that is complete in all ways, except we still assume target is in s, but beyond that, do not assume what the three parameters are.

Finally we should allow s to not contain target (though this requires the central idea of the next chapter).

The testing regime in Main is clear to understand and write, but pretty primitive. You have to look at a lot of output every time you test. We will come up with better testing schemes later.

 [1] We will not go far into the history of software engineering practice here, but these incremental problem solving methods were first widely introduced as a part of extreme programming. That name gives you an idea of the newness at the time.