Description
Problem summary
Develop a multithreaded C++ program that uses multiple threads to process a list of URLs
specified as command-line arguments. For each URL, the program must print (in the same order
in which URLs are specified) the number of words, and number of valid English words. A
dictionary is supplied to determine valid English words.
Starter code
Starter code is provided to streamline the following operations for you. You should study these
methods and be able to explain what these methods do –
1. Load valid English words from a given dictionary file (see: loadDictionary)
2. Determine if a given word is a valid English word (see: isValidWord)
3. A simple method to change punctuations and special characters to spaces to ease
extracting/processing words in a line of data (see: changePunct)
Program Inputs
The program must use command-line arguments for obtaining inputs. The command line
arguments will be in the following format:
1. The first command-line argument will specify the number of threads to use. For base case
requirements, the number of threads will be 1. For other cases the number of threads will
vary, but will always be lower than the number of URLs
2. Rest of the command-line arguments will be 1-or-more files to retrieve. Each file need to
be added to a base URL
https://ceclnx01.cec.miamioh.edu/~raodm/SlowGet.cgi?file=. For example,
given a file ex3.html, the full URL will be:
https://ceclnx01.cec.miamioh.edu/~raodm/SlowGet.cgi?file=ex3.html.
Program Outputs
The result of processing URLs should be displayed in exactly the same order in which the URLs
were specified. For each URL, the program should generate 1 line of output, in the following
format:
☐ is 1 blank space. Strings in blue are literal constants. See sample outputs for example.
Sample inputs and outputs
The command typed in is shown in bold. The commands and outputs are long because of URLs
and have been wrapped in this document; however, they are on one single line. Video on setting
command-line arguments in NetBeans is available on Canvas.
Base cases [12 points]
$ ./homework6 1 ex3.html
URL: https://ceclnx01.cec.miamioh.edu/~raodm/SlowGet.cgi?file=ex3.html, words: 39,
English words: 16
./homework6 1 ex3.html cpp.txt
URL: https://ceclnx01.cec.miamioh.edu/~raodm/SlowGet.cgi?file=ex3.html, words: 39,
English words: 16
URL: https://ceclnx01.cec.miamioh.edu/~raodm/SlowGet.cgi?file=cpp.txt, words: 6983,
English words: 5810
Due before: 11:59 PM (before Midnight) on Tue Oct 30 2018
Page 3 of 4
$ ./homework6 1 ex3.html cpp.txt us_constitution.txt miami_university.txt
URL: https://ceclnx01.cec.miamioh.edu/~raodm/SlowGet.cgi?file=ex3.html, words: 39,
English words: 16
URL: https://ceclnx01.cec.miamioh.edu/~raodm/SlowGet.cgi?file=cpp.txt, words: 6983,
English words: 5810
URL: https://ceclnx01.cec.miamioh.edu/~raodm/SlowGet.cgi?file=us_constitution.txt,
words: 7667, English words: 7422
URL: https://ceclnx01.cec.miamioh.edu/~raodm/SlowGet.cgi?file=miami_university.txt,
words: 32331, English words: 15348
! The above 3 base case is relatively straightforward. Consequently, if the
base case does not operate as expected, as per the course policy, the
program will be assigned zero score.
Multi threading tests (change number of threads, but exact same outputs) [18 points]
$ ./homework6 2 ex3.html cpp.txt us_constitution.txt miami_university.txt
URL: https://ceclnx01.cec.miamioh.edu/~raodm/SlowGet.cgi?file=ex3.html, words: 39,
English words: 16
URL: https://ceclnx01.cec.miamioh.edu/~raodm/SlowGet.cgi?file=cpp.txt, words: 6983,
English words: 5810
URL: https://ceclnx01.cec.miamioh.edu/~raodm/SlowGet.cgi?file=us_constitution.txt,
words: 7667, English words: 7422
URL: https://ceclnx01.cec.miamioh.edu/~raodm/SlowGet.cgi?file=miami_university.txt,
words: 32331, English words: 15348
$ ./homework6 3 ex3.html cpp.txt us_constitution.txt miami_university.txt
URL: https://ceclnx01.cec.miamioh.edu/~raodm/SlowGet.cgi?file=ex3.html, words: 39,
English words: 16
URL: https://ceclnx01.cec.miamioh.edu/~raodm/SlowGet.cgi?file=cpp.txt, words: 6983,
English words: 5810
URL: https://ceclnx01.cec.miamioh.edu/~raodm/SlowGet.cgi?file=us_constitution.txt,
words: 7667, English words: 7422
URL: https://ceclnx01.cec.miamioh.edu/~raodm/SlowGet.cgi?file=miami_university.txt,
words: 32331, English words: 15348
$ ./homework6 4 ex3.html cpp.txt us_constitution.txt miami_university.txt
URL: https://ceclnx01.cec.miamioh.edu/~raodm/SlowGet.cgi?file=ex3.html, words: 39,
English words: 16
URL: https://ceclnx01.cec.miamioh.edu/~raodm/SlowGet.cgi?file=cpp.txt, words: 6983,
English words: 5810
URL: https://ceclnx01.cec.miamioh.edu/~raodm/SlowGet.cgi?file=us_constitution.txt,
words: 7667, English words: 7422
URL: https://ceclnx01.cec.miamioh.edu/~raodm/SlowGet.cgi?file=miami_university.txt,
words: 32331, English words: 15348
Tips
• It is easiest to store the files specified as command-line arguments into a vector to further
process them.
• Use the simple HTTP client example from lecture slides to obtain response from the
server.
• Extracting words and counting valid English is straightforward using an
istringstream. Don’t over complicate this part.
Due before: 11:59 PM (before Midnight) on Tue Oct 30 2018
Page 4 of 4
• Approach this problem as a data parallel application in which a subset of URLs is
assigned to a thread to process. The logic of assigning threads to URLs is almost a copypaste from lecture slides.
• In continuation with examples from lecture slides, it would be easiest to store results as a
string in another vector and then finally print the vector after all the threads have finished
running.
• If you find your program running too slowly in NetBeans you can use the Release
mode (instead of Debug)
Submit to Canvas
This homework assignment must be turned-in electronically via Canvas CODE plug-in. Ensure
your C++ source files are named appropriately. Ensure your program compiles (without any
warnings or style errors) successfully. Ensure you have tested operations of your program as
indicated. Once you have tested your implementation, upload the following:
The 1 C++ source file you developed for this homework
Upload the C++ source files to onto Canvas. Do not submit zip/7zip/tar/gzip files. Upload each
file independently.
