ISA 563: Fundamentals of Systems Programming

Due: 11:59 PM, Feb. 5, 2013 
Reminders: Follow the submission instructions. Remember to comment your code!

Total Points: 60

0) Random number generation. (30 pts)

   Often, computer scientists, statisticians, physicists, social
   scientists, and mathematicians need a list of random numbers.
   Political pundits also find lists of random numbers useful to
   provide 'statistical' evidence of their arguments.

   Implement a tool to generate and print a sequence of 10 random
   numbers.  Each random number should be an integer in the range from
   0 to 100, inclusive (that means both 0 and 100 should have a chance
   of appearing). I do not expect you to implement your own random
   number generator. I expect you to use the standard way of obtaining
   randomness in a secure fashion.

   $ ./grand
   56 77 91 2 33 40 72 100 6 2
   $

   Augment your program to take a command line parameter specifying
   how many random numbers to generate. That is, if grand is invoked
   by:

   $ ./grand 4

   it will output 4 random numbers from 0 to 100, inclusive. Make sure
   your program does something sensible if the supplied argument is
   not a valid integer. There should not be an arbitrarily imposed
   upper limit to this number (in other words, do not have an
   artificial cap on the value of the argument).

   Since it is easy to forget how to use programs, it is often useful to
   provide a well-known command line switch (or parameter) that tells the
   user how to invoke the program. Augment your program to recognize two
   more command line arguments, '-h' and '--help' that prints out the
   usage information for the program. For example,

   $ grand -h

   and

   $ grand --help

   should output the following usage information:

   grand [-h | --help]       : output this usage message.
   grand [n]                 : print out n random integers in [0,100]

   Finally, augment your program to print out its version. Don't forget to
   add this usage case to your help dialog.

   $ grand --version
   grand-0.0.3
   $ grand -v
   grand-0.0.3
   $ 

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1) Functions and Recursion (30 pts)

   Experiment with recursion. The Fibannaci sequence is a famous
   naturally recursive series of numbers whose ratio approaches the
   Golden Ratio.

   f(n) = f(n-1) + f(n-2)

   Implement a program named 'fib' that uses recursion to calculate
   and print the first n Fibannaci numbers, where 'n' is less than or
   equal to 30.

   Usage:

   fib [n]

   For example, 'fib 4' should output:
   fib(0) = 1
   fib(1) = 1
   fib(2) = 2
   fib(3) = 3
   fib(4) = 5

   Modify your program so that providing the --target or -t option will
   print only the nth Fibannaci number.

   $ ./fib --target 3
   fib(3) = 3
   $

   Add the ability for your program to calculate the Fibannaci
   sequence iteratively rather than recursively. Output should not
   change. If you execute your program with the name 'ifib' then it
   performs the iterative calculation.  If it is executed via 'rfib'
   or 'fib' it performs the recursive method of calculating.

   $ ./fib --target 3
   fib(3) = 3
   $ ./ifib --target 3
   fib(3) = 3
   $ ./rfib --target 3
   fib(3) = 3
   $

   There is an example of how to accomplish this sort of test of the
   program name in the TCPL text. You can search Google for an
   iterative version of Fibannaci, but be sure to cite where you found
   it in your README.

   __________________________________________________________________________
   Note:

   You may want to consider using GNU getopt library for processing command
   line options.