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h algorithm (2)

This document outlines a programming assignment focused on implementing a simple data compression algorithm with specific I/O requirements. The assignment requires the use of object-oriented programming, particularly polymorphism, and emphasizes well-structured code with unit testing. The program must decode a given compressed data format and handle invalid pairs appropriately, with additional requirements for re-encoding the data and outputting results to standard output and error.

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leonardmark017
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9 views

h algorithm (2)

This document outlines a programming assignment focused on implementing a simple data compression algorithm with specific I/O requirements. The assignment requires the use of object-oriented programming, particularly polymorphism, and emphasizes well-structured code with unit testing. The program must decode a given compressed data format and handle invalid pairs appropriately, with additional requirements for re-encoding the data and outputting results to standard output and error.

Uploaded by

leonardmark017
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Programming Assignment

The Hyve
April 30, 2018

1 General Instructions
This document describes a programming assignment with a simple algorithmic and
I/O component.
You should have received a preparatory text a week or so before starting this
assignment, with some general hints on doing binary input/output and reading and
writing data to and from standard input and output. This assignment will assume
you are familiar with these terms and you know how to use these features.
The assignment is designed to be completed in 3 hours, though an extension
of 1 hour can be granted on request from the applicant. Writing the algorithm
component should be possible in well under this time. However, it is expected that
the code be well-structured, minimally documented and unit tested. Time allowing,
integration or functional tests would be regarded favorably. The objective here is
not to create an “enterprise” Hello World program full of design patterns [1], yet a
straightforward, purely procedural implementation with no abstractions would fall
short of the target of this assignment.
Any programming language is acceptable, provided that the program uses the
object oriented paradigm, in particular polymorphism.
The program can be distributed in any way the applicant wants. It is suggested
that the code be pushed to a public git server (e.g. one on Github or Bitbucket),
but this is not a requirement. Binaries are not necessary; in case a scripting
language is not used, the applicant should include simple instructions on how to
compile the supplied program.

2 Description of the Problem


In this assignment, you will be working on a very simple data compression scheme.
Not everything will be fully specified. The applicant is expected to infer, for in-
stance, the set of valid bytestreams under this specification without it being spelled
out here. If the applicant thinks he must make a non-obvious (but reasonable) as-
sumption, he should make that explicit.

2.1 The Compressed Data Format


Conceptually, the compressed data consist of a sequence of pairs of bytes Cs :

Cs = {(p0 , q0 ) , (p1 , q1 ) , . . . , (pn−1 , qn−1 )} (1)

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These pairs come in two forms; each pair can either be in the form (pi = 0, qi = c),
where c is any byte value, or it can be composed of two positive integers such
that 0 < qi ≤ pi (with i = 0, . . . , n − 1). In the first case, the pair represents
exactly one decoded byte (the value of qi ). In the other, the pair represents the
sequence obtained by taking qi bytes starting from an offset of pi bytes behind in
the decoded stream (see below).

2.2 Description of the Decoding Algorithm


The decoding algorithm is an implementation of a (non-injective) function that
takes a sequence Cs back to its decoded form s.
Starting with an empty result bytestring, read the encoded pair sequence (with
length n) from the left (i = 0) to the right. For each pair read, if pi = 0, append
qi to the output stream. Otherwise, pi > 0. Read the last pi characters appended
to the result string and take the first (from the left) qi characters.
For example, the following sequence:

(0, 61), (1, 1), (0, 62), (3, 2), (3, 3) (2)

would result in the bytestring 61 61 62 61 61 62 61 61 (represented here in


hexadecimal) through the sequence [61], [61 61], [61 61 62], [61 61 62 61 61]
((3, 2) means go back three characters, in this case to the first position, and take
the first two characters afterwards), and finally [61 61 62 61 61 62 61 61].
The hexadecimal values 61 and 62 become the characters a and b when inter-
preted as text. So the final output, when converted from bytes to text, is the string
aabaabaa. However for the purposes of this assignment the conversion from bytes
to text is out of scope and irrelevant, we will effectively be dealing with binary
data only.

2.3 Compressed Data Bytestream Representation


Each pair will be represented, in order, as a sequence of two unsigned bytes. There
will be no padding between the pairs. For instance, a possible encoding for the
byte array 20 2A 20 would be 00 20 00 2A 02 01 (with all bytes represented
here as their hexadecimal values).

2.4 Input of the Program


On input, the program will receive, on standard input, an encoded data stream.
There are no restrictions on the length of input data; indeed, it can be unbounded.

2.5 Output of the Program


The program should write:

• To standard output, the decoded binary data. If any invalid or incomplete


pair is found, the byte 3F should be output in its place.
• To standard error, the result of re-encoding the decoded data produced in
the above step. Write two implementations, a trivial one that always uses
pi = 0 and a better one that produces an output as short as you can manage.

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The program should default to the latter and only switch to the first one if
the environment variable USE_TRIVIAL_IMPLEMENTATION has value 1.

It is left undefined how much data the program should buffer before decoding
or re-encoding data.

3 Closing
You are expected to write a simple command line program that does the required
I/O and implements the described algorithms. If you have insufficient time to finish
the solution, please try to focus on the algorithms first. If you have time left, don’t
forget to add some minimal documentation and unit tests or other automatic tests.

References
[1] Taskinoor Hasan. “The Abuse of Design Patterns in Writing a Hello World
Program.” Internet: http://taskinoor.wordpress.com/2011/09/21/
the-abuse-of-design-patterns-in-writing-a-hello-world-program/.
Sept. 21 2011 [Aug. 29, 2013]

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