I've found the best way to approach a problem is to start out with a clean sheet of paper. Just write down what you are trying to do in a very basic sense. (If you can't figure out what you are trying to do, then you can't do it.) So:
Format Text
From there, you break the project down to small, individual tasks:
Format Text:
Read in text.
Manipulate.
Output text.
Just keep growing it until you have your pseudocode:
Read in a string (right there, you are doing two functions, and so you're not all the way there yet)
Check capitalization of string
Check spacing of string
check end of string
Output string
Obviously if your project encompasses more, then you should put in the details I am missing, I'm just trying to convey the method. I would not start coding until I was sure how I would check each letter in the string, how I was going to read it in, all the checks I needed to do, etc... But you would probably end up with something like this:
String
read a string in from .... (file?/standard input?)
for each letter in the string
if it's the first character
make sure it's capitalized (exists between capitals A and Z)
else,
make sure it's lowercase
if there is a delimiter ('.' || ',' || however many you want)
make sure there is a space afterwards
and so on. And if I'm wrong on the pseudocode - if it doesn't fit your program - that's also the best way to change it and make sure the logic still fits(I'm mostly thinking that's going to be a huge delimiter chain, there's probably a better way to do it.).
But that should get you started, and if you do that all the way (make sure there is only a basic function per line at the end of your pseudocode) you'll be surprised at how much of the program you will be able to code yourself (and quickly, once you get used to doing that), and of course you can post error messages up here for more help.
43
