My first C program!

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After my first C contribution last month, I've now written my first C program! It's a port from Python of this weekend's Easy Password Generator .

Both versions are implemented as a CGI, with the C version benchmarking about 500% faster than the Python version. (~100 req/sec vs. ~20). Both programs read a template.html file in the same directory, and interpolate a string into the <head> tag—a possible redirect to HTTPS—and two more into the <body>—a list of passwords (taken from apg(1)), and a Python/C version indicator.

Working with streams in C was pretty easy, whether stdin/out, process pipes, or filesystem files. However, I struggled to convert streams into strings (aka "character arrays"): first, getting the template off the filesystem, and then parsing the apg(1) output. I'm particularly confused by the relationship between pointers and arrays. The crux of the matter, I think, is that "the value of [an] array is the address of element zero of the array" [K&R, 99], but it will take more practice to grok that. I suspect, then, that my "char PAGE[1024 * 50]" and "int append(...)" hacks look quaint at best, and that memory allocation is also going to factor into things very soon.

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Feed back to Chad Whitacre.