10.1: Understand the Problem

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Before attempting to create a solution, it is important to fully understand the problem. Ensuring a complete understanding of the problem can help reduce errors and save time and effort. The first step is to understand what is required, especially the applicable input information and expected results or output.

Consider the problem of converting a single integer number into a string or series of characters representing that integer. To be clear, an integer can be used for numeric calculations, but cannot be displayed to the console (as it is). A string can be displayed to the console but not used in numeric calculations.

For this example, only unsigned (positive only) values will be considered. The small extra effort to address signed values is left to the reader as an exercise.

As an unsigned double-word integer, the numeric value 149810 would be represented as 0x000005DA in hex (double-word sized). The integer number 149810 (0x000005DA) would be represented by the string “1”, “4”, “9”, “8” with a NULL termination. This would require a total of 5 bytes since there is no sign or leading spaces required for this specific example. As such, the string “1498” would be represented as follows:

Character	"1"	"4"	"9"	"8"	NULL
ASCII Value (decimal)	49	52	57	56	0
ASCII Value (hex)	0x31	0x34	0x39	0x38	0x0

The goal is to convert the single integer number into the appropriate series of characters to form a NULL terminated string.