Abhiyantharu

Google Buzz: My views.

2010-02-18T00:39:00.000-08:00

Though there is nothing technical discussed here in this post, I'd take this opportunity to blog about a product from Google. Their recent one.

Since a week or so, people all over the world who use gmail have been provided with a new feature right within their mail. Its kinda like social networking, more specifically to say, its sorta copied what twitter does; with some new features and some modifications to the existing ones.

You can update your status, just like you do it on twitter, facebook, orkut and what-so-ever social networking site. Share the links you liked, share your pics from wherever you are (coz it also has mobile support).You can also watch the updates from your friends, follow unknown people whose updates you find interesting.

Not that these are totally new features which google has brought up. All of them were done in some roundabout method previously. Buzz is just like one stop where you can do it all in a simpler way now under one roof.

If you know Google Reader and have been using it for quite sometime, buzz makes no surprize to you at all. So, for all those who are extensively using reader, you find that buzz is just one more interface for your shared items. In other words, its like developing a new UI for your command line tools.

Why did Google start buzz? Here is what Kevin Rose had to say. I agree with him too.

Okay... It got released. People who werent using twitter but used gmail liked it very much. First two days of buzz went on overflow. Everybody buzzed every single update from them. Followed everyone in their contact list.

What next? From the next day, people were outa topic to update. Most of the new products go this way. Same applies to Google Wave. Twitter was filled with status updates asking everyone to send a wave invite if they had any. Same happened in case of Google's go language. Never heard a thing about Go since the first week of its release.

I'm not saying that buzz will also join the flop list. Those who use reader, continue to use buzz. Added advantage to them is that their passive friends (passive in the sense, those who don't use reader) follow them on buzz. One good thing is that you can add more sites you're active onto your buzz. You can link twitter, picasa, flickr, even blogger to buzz, which is quite a good feature.

These are just updates since a week or so. Who knows? Buzz might catch up soon and become a hit. Base of buzz, gmail is pretty wide inspite of threats from Facebook planning to start its own 'Gmail killer'.

I wish buzz its best luck for its future. Post your views.

Google vs. Bing... Whose the Winner?

2009-10-30T11:22:00.000-07:00

You might have seen a hell lotsa blog posts on this topic or atleast something related to it. Why you? I've seen lotsa them. You can check some on my links blog. Before writing in detail, let me give an intro for the dummies.

Google: A search engine by a company with the same name, established by Larry Page and Sergie Brin (Stanford passouts) in 1998, whose major revenue comes outa ads in search result pages as well as other sites like blogger, reader et al. They are plunging into more domains as days pass on. The word 'Google' is derived from the term googol in math which some argue to be 1 followed by 99 zeroes while other say its 1 followed by 100 zeroes... Nevermind...

Big heads: Larry Page, Sergie Brin, Marissa Mayer, Eric Schmidt...

Bing: A search engine by Microsoft, company by Bill Gates Jr along with his mate Paul Allen in 1975, Major revenue from OSes developed by Microsoft (MS for short). Windows 95, Windows XP being the major revenue generators along with their office suites. Also revenue from royalties for development frameworks like .net, COM, COM+, MFC etc... Also into producing gadgets like Zune, Surface computing.

Big heads: Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer...

Enough of the introduction. Lets dive in.

Let me make these points clear first:

1. I'm not criticising one company holding up the other.

2. My conclusions are based on the experiements i conduct hereby...

3. To help us out, searching both these search engines (bing might claim itself to be decision engine, still) we have a site which gives us results of both engines side by side... Here is the link. I've checked it on both sites as well as this site to get identical results (Foolish experiment though)

Given a pen, you would write your name first. Atleast this is what a survey says as what I've read somewhere. Likewise, given a search engine, I would search myself. Call me a narcissist, I don't care!

So, let me search myself... Here is what I got.

Well, look at that! Bing shows the link of a site which I hardly use. Also, there are no links related to google's site. My blog is on blogger which belongs to google, we can see that bing supresses contents from google. I've seen it many a times.

You can also check out the number of matches found as result. Google has more results as it caches more.

Lets move further. The narcissist inside me is hurt. To satisfy him, lets search a different name. dabbanannmaga is my twitter login name. Lets find what both the sites have got to offer me on that.

Here we go...

Aah! a bit of relief here now. But before the deal between MS and twitter (as well as Google and twitter on social media search), bing was showing me enidhi's twitter page as the top result. Things have started working my way atleast for this search.

Enough of me, lets search for bing. The newer of the search engines. Lets check how both of them treat each other.

Well, Google is generous enough to provide is results with 10 times those found on bing itself...

Finally, lets search Google on both. Here we go for the final search.

Look at that! How generous Google is and how stingy bing is... just one single result for google? Grow up MS...

Even you may try on these lines... Please do let me know about your views commenting here. You may also try searching common rivals/allys to both these companies like apple and twitter respectively...

Before we conclude, let me cough out a speculative thought running in my mind since the release of bing... Mind you, this is just a speculation. What would have made MS to name their decision engine bing of all the rest? Some ideas I get are

1. bing, a kinda sound you get when an idea flashes.

2. bing, look out the g at the end, 'g' symbolizing google? so, is bing an acronym which contains google?

3. bing, again, the g factor comes into play but it might not be an acronym. might be a secret code. bing, bang? bin google, ban google? of course, the intentions of MS in creating bing is to dethrone google as the world leader in web search. literally throw google in the bin. This might be the scenario well this is the strong speculation running in my mind.

Now to conclusions.

Lets list out the merits and demerits of both engines.

Google:

Merits:

1. Numero Uno in web search, hit by bing slightly since 4-5 months.

2. Caches more number of pages than any search engine.

3. Page Rank, helps people write more specifically making searches better.

Demerits:

1. Can provide related suggestions as in bing. [Might have such feature but I'm unaware of, Of course, it suggests as you type, thats one]

2. Can provide a short list of search history as in bing.

Bing:

Merits:

1. Claims itself a decision engine, giving the best possible page first with less number of searches and in less time. [I'm quite doubtful of the latter though]

2. Has tiny helpful features like suggestions, search history.

3. Initially was blocking sites with adult content from getting searched. I liked this feature.

Demerits:

1. Caches less number of pages.Search bandwidth shrinked.

2. Has to be a bit generous in pages giving results related to rivals.

3. Net neutrality isnt quite evident.

Finally, There have been many companies which came to limelight just for a few weeks probably for a few months which claimed themselves as google killer. But they commited suicide in no time.

Bing has been giving strong competition though it has its own demerits. Will it kill google? Only time has the answer but for it to do that, it has to undergo large changes along with the small ones I've suggested in this post.

Signing off... Once again, pour in your comments.

64 = 65??

2009-09-08T03:19:00.000-07:00

Guess you had also got a mail with this subject. It partitions a 8X8 square into 4 pieces and re-arranges it in such a way that it forms a rectangle of dimensions 5X13 and try to prove that

8X8 = 5X13
==>64 = 65!!!!!!!!

This video might help you visualise it. Check out the comments for possible errors or solutions.

This problem was first pointed by one of the mathematician Charles Lutwidge Dodgeson who also penned Alice in the Wonderland with the pen name Lewis Caroll.

Okay! Lemme tell you. That video or the mail you saw assumes that the slopes of all the cut pieces to be the same which in reality is not. They have different slopes across their slant edges. You may try it out on a graph sheet to get confirmed.

Okay I'll post what I did on my graphic editor here.

First of all, we have a 8X8 square. Let us cut them into 4 pieces as seen in the video.

Lets try arranging these four pieces into a 5X13 rectangle. Here is what we get.

You can notice that as the slopes of the slant efges of all the four pieces vary, there is a gap between them. In face it is a parellogram with the area 1 square unit which is exactly the difference between 64 and 65 (8X8 and 5X13).

Let us try another similar problem. Let us take a square with side 5 units and divide it into 4 parts as given before and try it to arrange inside a 3X8 rectangle. If those who didnt knew, they would equate 24 to 25 as done for the previous problem.

Here again, the slopes vary, but now, instead of leaving a gap at the centre, pieces overlap , which exactly explains why we cannot equate 24 to 25. In fact, the area covered by the overlapped pieces equates to 1 square unit.

One can't tweak math so easily, aint it?

If one diggs more into this, they'll find a pattern in the sequence. Lets try to find it.

In the first problem, the lengths considered were these numbers. 3, 5, 8, and 13.

Similarly in the second one, the lengths considered were 2,3,5,8.

didn't you notice that these are fibonacci numbers in order?

Forget the first number in both the examples, we have 8 square = (5 X 13) - 1 ,

Similarly, 5 square = (3 X 8) + 1

We have the fibonacci sequence as

0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34,55,89..... ==> F0, F1, F2, F3, F4, F5, F6, F7, F8, F9, F10, F11......

Writing the above equations in F form, we have

F6 X F6 = F5 * F7 - 1
F5 X F5 = F4 * F6 + 1

In general, Fibonacci sequences have the property,

Fn X Fn = Fn-1 * Fn+1 + (-1)^n

This problem is just a specific version of the above property of fibonacci numbers.

This is just one small property of the innumerous of fibonacci numbers...

Just came to know about this fact yesterday from a book that I'm reading since a week. Thought of sharing it with you guys.

Interested to know more about such properties, read that book...

Alfred S. Posamentier and Ingmar Lehmann, The (Fabulous) Fibonacci Numbers,

Thank you...

Fedora 11 - Leonidas, Released.

2009-06-09T09:16:00.000-07:00

Hey all!

Just thought of tell you all that a new version of Fedora has been released. Downloading the image. Hopefully its just as good as its previous versions. =)

Check it out here.

Actual Size of a DVD

2009-04-12T01:06:00.000-07:00

A month ago, was tryin to burn a DVD to its maximum extent. Had a Sony DVD which claims its capacity to be 4.7GB. But when I tried burning data worth 4.7GB it said, please insert a disk with 4.7GB of capacity.

I kept on reducing it by 100 MB i.e., 4.6GB, 4.5GB but in vain.even 4.4 GB didnt work. Also, it was giving me confused error messages about DVD+R and DVD-R formats.

After a bit of googling, I found that the 4.7 GB of a DVD disk is actually 4.7 * 10^30. That boils down to 4.3 * 2^30 i.e., 4.3 GiB. When i reduced it to 4.3GB, everything went well. Just thought of sharing this info so that you don't face it further. =)

Problem of the day - I

2009-02-04T05:58:00.000-08:00

Will be posting problems I'm working on under this topic regularly (As regular as possible).

Currently working on placing chess pawns on a standard chessboard. Problem description goes as follows. Hope I come up with a solution asap.

There exists certain number of chess pawns ( pawns here do not mean only soldiers, it can be any chess pawn). Given the initial placement, one will be given pawns sequentially which he needs to place it on the board in such a way that it doesnt hit any of the existing pawns.

Try it out... Good exercise though! Happy solvin... =)

Another interesting tool by Google, Insights

2008-08-08T19:07:00.000-07:00

Hey Hey Hey!!!

For all those who are interested in statistics and web pages analysis and page hits as well as related stuffs,

Here is the tool which does just that. Its named google insights. Pretty powerful in its search, google is now ready to give analysis of searches performed worldwide. What people like for, what they google most for...

It has many salient features like comparing by search items, location and time locations, one can filter based on location, Ex: How many in India are searching for such n such a topic, also based on date. Also, you can select sub regions like how many in Karnataka in India are searching for this topic. They have the results cached since 2004 and this workds from that particular timeline. You can also filter on timeliens like 'from last 30 days, from last years, have a look into it for more info.

Also, search items are based on categories like say Sports, Internet, technology, so you might make your search faster by selecting only those categories you are interested.

It also gives you a graph (from the timeline you selected and shows the number of searches on that given topic, For Example, I was searching for Dr. Rajkumar whose graph was pretty normal but it reached its high on mid of April (Exactly 12th of April, when he had died), Seems reliable for your searches.

Also, it gives the top search strings people google it for and its rank too. It gives the top 10 countries who had googled it for along with the percentage. Besides, it colors a world map, coloring region dark of those regions where more people search for it. This is one of the cool features.

It also gives you the search strings related to your topic whose counts are rising day by day.

You might think, this works for everything. Actually it keeps track of those topics whose hit counts cross a certain limit ( I have absolutely no idea as to what that limit is... )

Topics like 'Jaggesh' will display the graphs and the top searching countries (4 in this case as of now), but search terms related to that will say "not enough search volume to show results"

Surprisingly, selecting subregion Karnataka says not enough search volumes to show graphs. I see something fishy here.

If you search for a more obscure topic like 'Napolean Dovva', it says not enough search volume again.

So, to be searched by google insights, you gotta have your page rank high and the number of hits should be more.

Atleast this is what i observed in an hour spent in the past two days. Hope I gather more information and get back to you. Hope this helps you out.

My tale with setting network connection on Fedora 9

2008-05-27T09:13:00.000-07:00

Well, here is my story!!!

Had installed the brand new Fedora 9 on my home PC. Had forgotten the network settings and during installation, It had asked for network details like the IP, default gateway etc...

I had not noted it down previously. Thought I'll configure later and skipped the step. After installation, I wasn't able to browse the net. Obviously, reason being, the network connection not set properly.

Since then, Was just busy setting network connections but in vain. tried different kinda network, ethernet, broadband, xDSL and what not? This went on for 8 days exactly till today.

Today, I just deleted all sorta connection I created and just restarted the network service and voila! ITs working and I'm publishing this entry in this blog.

Still don't know the reason behind it. Will post it once i come to know about it.

Fedora 9 rocks \m/ !!!

Nice Add on to firefox!

2007-10-13T21:16:00.001-07:00

Here is a cool link i found for firefox! pretty interesting. One can publish posts without logging onto blogger or any blog for that matter.

Check it out yourself.

Will come up with something when i feel like writing something technical. =)

tryin a simple program!

2006-10-31T06:56:00.000-08:00

Hi All!

Tryin this simple problem for the day! Will post my solution soon! Have a look at it!

3n+1 problem

Print something outside a main!

2006-09-25T03:28:00.000-07:00

hi All!

Came after a long break! Cant make time actually in this boringly busy schedule of my job! Dint read anything technical as such but couldn't leave this blog inactive for this long! Hence posting something interesting for those who dont know about this!

I ask you to print something, say yo name through a program!
you write,

#include < iostream >
#include < iomanip &gt
using std::cout;
using std::endl;

int main()
{
cout << "Sandesh" << endl;
}

Simple right???

Now i ask you to print yo name without writing any output statements in main. You say, Fine! I'll declare a function, write the output statement over there n there you have yo program. i.e.,

#include < iostream >
#include < iomanip &gt

using std::cout;
using std::endl;

void foo()
{
cout << "Sandesh" << endl;
}

int main()
{
foo();
return 0;
}

Haha! I dint say that way! I want neither any output statements in main nor any functions using such things in main!!

Thinking??? Here goes the solution!

#include < iostream >
#include < iomanip &gt

int foo()
{
cout << "Sandesh" << endl;
return 0;
}

static int x = foo();

int main()
{
return 0;
}

Sumthin interestin right???

Just my explaination on Bucket Sort!

2006-06-14T08:22:00.000-07:00

Hey! thought of posting somethin right here! Posting on bucket sort, which i read long time back on net! Its random thought! Might not be 100% perfect but gives you a fair idea on bucket sort! Do ignore ( better post a comment) if you find a mistake!

Here it goes!

Bucket sort is an O(2n) algorithm. Its usually applied for large amount of data. Also it requires an index to the data to be sorted! i.e., it can't be used to sort strings( unless you've got a structure holding the string and an integer index associated with it!). Better say it that a structure having an index, if you have a big list of this structure tosort, better you go for bucket sort. Here you traverse the array only twice and sort the data. The explaination goes as below!

Assumptions for the explaination.
This document, considers only integers as the elements to be sorted! i.e., a simple list of numbers are sorted. If you have an indexed structure, you can easily modify the pseudo code given!

You have an unsorted array of integers. You know the biggest number in the list. Say for our explaination lets assume that the largest number in the list is 10. Then in the algorithm, we maintain an array( a bucket ) of size 10( why? will be cleared in the next section.) Lets take a sample data!

4,3,9,1,8,6,4,10,9,6,7,4,3,8 ( Lets call this array array A)

so we maintain an array of size 10. All the elements of the array are initialized to zero.( This array will be called B)

Now, we traverse the array from begin to end. While we are traversing, we check the value in hand in A, and increment the corresponding index in B! i.e., If we find 4 as the element in the array A, we increment the 4th index value of B by 1. This is done for all the elements of the array A.

After the traversal of Array A, what we do is just print the index of B those many times as its value. i.e., if the index 7 in the array B is 2 we print 7 twice.

Lets populate the array B for the example array A. We'll have a better understanding. ( in this algorithm, we'll consider 1 indexed arrays i.e., arrays start with index 1, if implementing in languages like C, where array index starts with 0, just neglecting the first index will help a lot. So the traversal, we just list the index of B with index 1-10)

Before starting.
A - 4,3,9,1,8,6,4,10,9,6,7,4,3,8
B - 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0

A - 4,3,9,1,8,6,4,10,9,6,7,4,3,8
B - 0,0,1,1,0,0,0,0,0,0

A - 4,3,9,1,8,6,4,10,9,6,7,4,3,8
B - 0,0,1,1,0,0,0,0,1,0

A - 4,3,9,1,8,6,4,10,9,6,7,4,3,8
B - 1,0,1,1,0,0,0,0,1,0

A - 4,3,9,1,8,6,4,10,9,6,7,4,3,8
B - 1,0,1,1,0,0,0,1,1,0

A - 4,3,9,1,8,6,4,10,9,6,7,4,3,8
B - 1,0,1,1,0,1,0,1,1,0

A - 4,3,9,1,8,6,4,10,9,6,7,4,3,8
B - 1,0,1,2,0,1,0,1,1,0

A - 4,3,9,1,8,6,4,10,9,6,7,4,3,8
B - 1,0,1,2,0,1,0,1,1,1

A - 4,3,9,1,8,6,4,10,9,6,7,4,3,8
B - 1,0,1,2,0,1,0,1,2,1

A - 4,3,9,1,8,6,4,10,9,6,7,4,3,8
B - 1,0,1,2,0,2,0,1,2,1

A - 4,3,9,1,8,6,4,10,9,6,7,4,3,8
B - 1,0,1,2,0,2,1,1,2,1

A - 4,3,9,1,8,6,4,10,9,6,7,4,3,8
B - 1,0,1,3,0,2,1,1,2,1

A - 4,3,9,1,8,6,4,10,9,6,7,4,3,8
B - 1,0,2,3,0,2,1,1,2,1

A - 4,3,9,1,8,6,4,10,9,6,7,4,3,8
B - 1,0,2,3,0,2,1,2,2,1

So, after the first iteration, we have the B array as 1,0,2,3,0,2,1,2,2,1.

after this, we just print the indexes of the array B as many times as the value contained in that index. i.e.,

1 one time, 2 zero times, 3 two times ...........

that boils down to the sorted array,

1,3,3,4,4,4,6,6,7,8,8,9,9,10

Which is sorted. This will be of real help if your data is huge. No comparisons at all in this sort. Check if your data is in billions and your max element is say 100000. If space is not your constraint, then you can go for this sort easily as an efficient implementation.

Limitations of this sort is,

1.Needs lots of space.
2.Needs an index to sort.

(I remember only these at this point.)

probable pseudo code.

for all the elements in the array A
update the corresponding index in the array B

for all elements in B
print the index as many times as the value contained in it.

A probable C chunk of function would be,

const int arraySizeOfA = 1287381246783 ;
const int maximumNumberInArrayA = 10000;

int A[ arraySizeOfA ];
int B[ maximumNumberInArrayA + 1 ];

int i,j ;

for( j = 0; j <= maximumNumberInArrayA; ++j )
B[ j ] = 0;

for( i = 0; i < arraySizeOfA; ++i )
B[A[i]]++;

for( j = 1; j < maximumNumberInArrayA; ++j )
for( i = 0; i < B[ j ]; ++i )
printf("%d", j) ;

still have doubts?? contact me!

Another interesting program!

2006-05-25T05:08:00.000-07:00

At last, i found something to write in this blog!

Somedays back, i was just fiddling with the linux shell which has umpteen number of commands( Of which i know only a few! Chee chee! ). Was just goin thru one command 'factor' and found it a bit interesting!

Since then, was tryin to write it in my way! It may not be efficient, but i've got the satisfaction of tryin that interesting one!

All factor does is print all the prime factors of the number passed.

If you're interested in writing one, dont go thru right now, try writing it once and get the satisfaction.

Here goes my implementation!

#include < iostream &gt
#include < iomanip &gt
#include < cmath &gt
#include < climits &gt

using namespace std;

unsigned long long isPrime( unsigned long long number )
{
unsigned long long rootOfNumber = static_cast < unsigned long long &gt ( sqrt( number ) );

if( !( rootOfNumber % 2 ) ) rootOfNumber += 1;

for( unsigned long long i = 3; i <= rootOfNumber; i++ ) if( !( number % i ) ) return i; return 0; } void printPrimeFactors( unsigned long long number ) { unsigned long long result = 0, resultPair = 0; result = isPrime( number ); if( !result ) cout << ' ' << resultpair =" number" length =" strlen(" i =" 0;" result =" 0;" initialzeros =" true;"> 19 && ( strcmp( number, "18446744073709551615" ) > 0 ) )
{
cerr << " Error : Bejaan doddadaythu! Hogolo! " << i =" 0;" initialzeros =" false," digit =" number[">>= 1;
}
if( number > 1 )
printPrimeFactors( number );
else if( number >= 0 )
cout <<>> number;
primeFactors( number );
}
else
{
for( int i = 1; i < argc; i++ )
{
if( argv[ i ][ 0 ] != '-' )
{
number = stringToUnsignedLongLong( argv[ i ] );
primeFactors( number );
}
else
cout << " No negative values please!! " << endl;
}
}
cout << endl;

return 0;
}

Writing this in my stupidly busy schedule took me 2 weeks outa which i've spent 3 hours effectively to write this!

Explaination goes as follows.

You need, iostream, iomanip to print into the console. cmath for sqrt and limits for limit of long long!

If some of you dont know that there is a modifier for int called long long, its a 64 bit number introduced with the std c99 C standard. This program finds prime factors for all the numbers falling in that range.

isPrime function checks whether the number passed is a prime number or not! This is a customised function which finds prime numbers only in this program. Try using this function outside, it'll fail coz it doesn't handle even numbers. ( Wanna know how?? I'm not passing any even number to this function! )

What happens in that function is it finds the square root of the number which is supposed to be decided as prime or not! We loop in the interval [3,sqrt(number)]. If( sqrt(number) is even, we add 1 so that its odd!
If you've some math background in Primes, you'll know that, if you dont find any number in [2,sqrt(number)], which divides the number, its a prime. This is what the function checks for. If it finds one, it just returns the factor, else, it returns 0.

printPrimeFactors is a recursive function that calls itself on the factors of the number. It tries to fins whether the number is prime, if so prints it and exits ( this is the exit condition of recursion ). Else, it gets the factor, finds its pair, and calls itself on these numbers finally printing the prime factors recursively! ( Try an example, you'll understand it better! ).

stringToUnsignedLongLong is a function written as i found atoll not fillin my needs at this moment! Had got some time and thought of not wasting time to debug on these things. This function just returns the unsigned long long of the string it gets as the argument. It just parses the string and adds on multiplying the result with 10. Simple logic!

PrimeFactors was just a dummy function written coz that part of code was called twice in the driver ( main ). You can omit it! It just checks for boundary condition and passes the correct argument for printPrimeFactors().

Main is a driver program demonstrating the function.

Still have doubts???????????

Contact me!

Thats it for now! Catch ya soon with somethin more interesting!

The answer for the puzzle asked in the last post.

2006-04-10T06:29:00.000-07:00

Hey!

Back with the answer.

Lets move step by step towards the final answer. Incremental improvement towards the solution.

Lets assume that we dont have any knowlegde in C other than a hello World program. Such a person would attack the problem as

#include

int main()
{
printf( "0000000000000000000000000000000000000000 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000 ........" );

return 0;

}

This however is not a solution. Not at all.

Moving onto the next step, lets assume that we know the conditionals and loops exixting in C. Not more than that. Then we might use a loop to print the required thing.

#include

int main()
{
int x = 2147483647;

for( int i = 0; i < x; i++ )
printf( "0" );

return 0;
}

We might reduce the number of iterations by printing more number of zeros in the printf.

Now lets move to my solution which is quite small compared to the above solutions. I won't tell that mine is the efficient one. Who knows there might be other efficient ways.

If you look at the documentation of printf. ( You can man it on a Linux box,just say $ man 3 printf ). I'm not gonna print the documentation. Go thru it if you are interested. This was the solution i got.

#include

int main()
{
int x = 2147483647, y = 0;
printf("%0*d", x, y );

return 0;
}

The logic goes like this. * in the printf would take the corresponding argument passed as the argument and print those many 0's. the d option would add the next argument to the existing number ( those many number of zeros ) and print it. As we want only zeros to get printed, we pass 0 as the second argument. If you fail to pass a second argument, it would take some garbage value.

Hope that this is a better solution. Pour in your implementations if it is more efficient.

Kudos to the creators of C. Dennis M. Ritchie and Brian W. Kernighan.

Right now, tryin to solve a problem which i got thru a mailing list. Quite interesting. Will post it once i solve it.

Bye.

A small puzzle!

2006-04-06T21:59:00.000-07:00

Hey guys! Back to ma English blog.

Goin thru some books to post somethin technical! Meanwhile i'll jus ask a small puzzle for you guys to solve. Its very simple. Try writing a C program printing 2147483647 0s(zeros). Try making it as efficient as possible. Also try to make the code as little as possible.

Hope you guys try it out!

I'll come up with a different answer for the above question if possible. Its very simple. Try incrementally.

All the very best to all of you!

Still not able to post!

2006-03-31T07:10:00.000-08:00

Hey guys! have some patience!

still didnt find anything to post!

Will do it ASAP!

Guess i'll post a topic here Weekly!

2006-03-23T05:41:00.000-08:00

Hi all! I'm back without a topic! I'm not able to think of anything else other than work! Damn it! Guess i'll post a new article in this blog atleast once a week!

Hang around if possible!

Chill out! I'm in no mood to blog today!

Bye guys!

My First Post in this blog!

2006-03-21T00:27:00.000-08:00

Hi All!

This is a blog i created for my friends who wanted me to write in English. You guys can check my Kannada blog at http://kannadigaa.blogspot.com.

My Primary blog remains that, but i prefer writing some techie things ( All tech stuff i read and unnerstand ) in this blog.

Keep waiting.

Maja hodiri makkla!