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cpuzzlecode-golf

Fixing a broken loop by changing exactly one character


I found a site with some complicated C puzzles. Right now I'm dealing with this:

The following is a piece of C code, whose intention was to print a minus sign 20 times. But you can notice that, it doesn't work.

#include <stdio.h>
int main()
{
    int i;
    int n = 20;
    for( i = 0; i < n; i-- )
        printf("-");
    return 0;
}

Well fixing the above code is straight-forward. To make the problem interesting, you have to fix the above code, by changing exactly one character. There are three known solutions. See if you can get all those three.

I cannot figure out how to solve. I know that it can be fixed by changing -- to ++, but I can't figure out what single character to change to make it work.


Solution

  • Here is one solution:

    for( i = 0; -i < n; i-- )
            printf("-");
    

    Here is a second one, thanks to Mark for helping me!

    for( i = 0; i + n; i-- )
        printf("-");
    

    And Mark also had the third one which is

    for( i = 0; i < n; n-- )
        printf("-");