Posts by DavidB

Good to see you back!

Life is busy for everybody, I think.

Changed jobs, married, moved and busy getting this house in order mostly.

Hopefully, the change of job is to something better, more satisfying, better paying, more convenient location, etc. (Also, if you think you are busy now, wait until you have children!) I wish you all the best.

This is an extremely basic question, but I haven't found an answer yet.

I recently purchased a brand-new computer with Windows 10 and at the moment am using the Microsoft Edge browser that came with it.

I would like to open some offline (HTML) pages, but the Control-O feature to which I am accustomed in IE, Chrome, and Firefox, doesn't work. In the Edge browser, the hotkey Control-O resets the zoom level.

Is there a replacement hotkey for Control-O in Microsoft Edge?
Alternately, what is the non-hotkey method for opening an offline page in Edge?

Note, I am not trying to set the default Start page. I would simply like a quick and easy way to navigate to and open an HTML page that is saved on the hard drive.

Another aspect: it displays differently, depending upon what browser is used.

In Google Chrome, I see three columns presenting a variety of topics being discussed on Daniweb. It reminds me of the old Yahoo! page from 15 - 20 years ago, and all its copycats, that threw everything out on the front page: latest news, weather, sports, horoscope, hollywood gossip, etc.
And the "Toggle Menu" button at the top left of the screen works, so I can drill down through the various menus.

In Internet Explorer, there is only one column, the left-most. The other two columns are empty space.
And the "Toggle Menu" button does not work. I can click it as often as I want--nothing happens. In fact, I logged in last week through IE, couldn't see much on display, couldn't work through any menus, so I wondered what was going on. (I even IM'ed Dani about it. Now that I am using Chrome, things don't look quite so bad.)

First thing I'd suggest is to upgrade your version of VS. The support for c++ is much better.

Yes, I am considering that. Maybe before I start the next project. I hesitate because I don't think it's an upgrade of my existing program; it's a completely new install. I've already got three versions on my computer. I'd like to avoid a fourth. Too much clutter on my computer already. If it was simply an update of my existing version, I'd jump right on it.

As to your particular problem try this post.

Thanks.
I added the following line to the very top of the program and the problem has gone away:

#define _SCL_SECURE_NO_WARNINGS

Excellent! The program is working properly again with no hiccups.

Thanks for the help.

I am updating a C++ program, part of which copies arrays of doubles by iterating through each array (copies elements of array wa2 into array X):

for (j = 0; j < N; ++j) {
        X[j] = wa2[j];
} // End for j

I would like to use the built-in function copy, so am going through the program replacing all loops with copy:

copy(wa2, wa2 + N, X);

However, this causes my compiler to complain:

error C4996: 'std::_Copy_impl': Function call with parameters that may be unsafe - this call relies on the caller to check that the passed values are correct. To disable this warning, use - D_SCL_SECURE_NO_WARNINGS. See documentation on how to use Visual C++ 'Checked Iterators'

I have gone through this program and am sure the limits of the copy are fine. But I don't know how to turn off this check so that compilation can complete and this program can be executed. I have never tinkered with compiler options before. Any suggestions? (I am using Microsoft Visual Studio Express 2013 for Windows Desktop.)

A recent study done by a think tank hired by Canadian airline companies has come to the conclusion that if the airlines charged less money then people would buy more tickets.

Your topic hits a nerve; it is something we have been kvetching about for a long time.
In fact, Scott Gilmore, a columnist with MacLean's magazine, made similar comments earlier this year: Canada is not a country

It is a pretty good article, not specifically about travel, and I think he made some excellent points. His comment about black swan moments, in particular, resonated with me, but he didn't go far enough. I think history is shaped by black swan moments. Period. And they are far more common than people think.

However, he did get strongly criticized for this article. Some people like to pick nits, and they really attacked this article piece by piece.

Some of my connections on LinkedIn have been sending me requests to also connect with them on ReferHire and Dock (if you're on LinkedIn, you probably know what I am talking about.)

So far, I have resisted. My first impression is something like, "Great. More social media networks. Isn't there enough already!"

But I am wondering if any DaniWeb members have experience with either of these communities.
If so, what is your impression?

A couple additional comments.

You should check that the calculation of half is really what you want.
The upper limit for the iteration might be DIM/2 - 1.

Also, I'd recommend using a different variable name for max.
max is a predefined function in C++. It takes in two operators and returns the maximum of the two. For example,

dummyVar = max(2, 5); // should return 5

Using it as a variable name might cause issues.

Hello, Audrey.

Welcome to the DaniWeb forums. We are glad you joined us.

These forums are an excellent resource: lots of good information and many knowledgeable members here.

It is a great place for the sharing of ideas. I am sure you will learn a lot here.

See you around the forums.

toupper is a built-in function in C++, defined in <cctype>, so it should be accessible throughout the program.
Unless you have named one of your user-created sub-routines "toupper"--which is a really bad idea.

Or maybe, "Why is the if condition not working?"
It's outside the main loop.

It sounds like you are looking for a version (or revision) control system. They offer ways to highlight the changes made between one version of a file and another.

Have you looked into Tortoise SVN or Git?

Actually, there are some old threads here on Daniweb you would probably find very informative:

Version Control
https://www.daniweb.com/community-center/threads/473781/version-control

Git: How To
https://www.daniweb.com/programming/software-development/tutorials/435715/git-how-to

Revision Control Systems
https://www.daniweb.com/community-center/threads/237930/revision-control-systems

These threads will probably do a lot to point you in the right direction.

Hope this helps.

Thanks for all the advice. That was very informative.

I didn't realize there were so many options.
Even to upload an image to Wikipedia requires a license.
If I type text for a simple equation, that is fine. No boundary-pushing discovery here: e.g., cos(x) - x = 0.
But if I want to make the equation look nicer by creating a graphic of it, and trying to upload the png, it needs to come with a license. (So much for doing some quick and easy editing.)

I suppose it is good to know about licenses in any case; sooner or later the knowledge is bound to come in handy.

Grüezi, Sandra.

Welcome to the DaniWeb forums.

I lived in Zürich for about six months; it is a beautiful city, but expensive.
And it is so central, it felt like being in the middle of everything (two hours in any direction and you are in a completely different country/climate.)
I had taken a German course in school, but never quite got a handle on the Swiss dialects.

I hope you enjoy it here.

I have translated many numerical math programs from FORTRAN into C++ and JavaScript. The original FORTRAN source code listings are posted on the NETLIB site and have been in the public domain for 20, 30, years.

The C++ and JavaScript translations that I write are hand-coded, line-by-line, and repeatedly tested and stepped through. The conversion tool f2c is not used.

Sometimes I get emails from people asking if they can use my program, or the source code, or parts of it in their own work.
I do not mind people using my code in their own work; I implicitly assume people will use it when I post it on a public website anyhow.

But some people ask about licensing (MIT, BSD, BSD 2/3-Clause, Apache, or some other license.)
I have no idea about licensing.
Coding is just a hobby of mine; I have never looked into licenses, how they work, what they do, which one would be most appropriate to my work, etc.

Any advice?
How do I decide to add a license to my work? And, if so, what factors should be considered to decide which license is appropriate to the type of work I post?

Yeah, Google does some funny things.

I recently finished a brand-new math program and uploaded the page onto my size. Then I wrote a blog post about it. My intention is that the page with the program on it should be relatively spartan, and the blog post is to provide backgound information, derivations, extra material, etc. Basically, the blog is supposed to support the main page.

However, when I do a search for my search terms, the main page is nowhere to be found (I stopped scrolling after the twentieth page), but the blog post is pretty high. I don't think anybody links to my blog, especially after only a few days. Puzzling.

Sounds do-able. You could even have a 6 x 6 and get the size of the matrix from the inpuťted data. No need for any radiobuttons. Or am I missing something?

That's true. I suppose I could create an HTML page that displays input fields for a 6 x 6 matrix. Then the user could select what size matrix he is working with, up to, and including, 6 x 6. Say he selects 4 x 4. Then the program would save this value and execute, keeping track of the fact it is a 4 x 4 matrix. The page would always display inputs for a 6 x 6 matrix--which is more than enough, but not a clean way of doing it.

However, I was hoping to try something a little more fancy, perhaps even dabble with another language.
I am thinking about having a mostly blank page presented to the user. No matrix entry fields would even be seen until the user indicates a matrix size. The user would be prompted to select a radio button, or enter an integer value, indicating the size of the matrix to be entered. The appropriate number of entry fields would then appear on the page. If he indicated 4 x 4, then fields for a 4 x 4 matrix would appear. Not more.

I have seen this effect done on some pages, but don't know how. AJAX? Node? PHP?

I have been writing plain old vanilla JavaScript pages for a while, for numerical math problems. Usually, I create one page for a specific problem.
For example, one page to solve a system of 3 Equations in 3 Unknowns, one page to solve a system of 4 Equations in 4 Unknowns, one page to solve a system of 5 Equations in 5 Unknowns, etc. In each case, the underlying algorithm does not change, just the interface on the HTML page for getting inputs from the user.

Now I'd like to try something different. I'd like the underlying program to accept data for up to a 6 x 6 matrix, and give the user the option of selecting a matrix size UP TO 6.
i.e., have radio buttons by which a user can indicate he's going to be inputting data for matrices of size 2 x 2, 3 x 3, 4 x 4, 5 x 5, 6 x 6.

But I do not want to display fields for a 6 x 6 matrix. I want the input fields to appear dynamically based on what the user selects.

Before making this selection, the data fields for input wouldn't even be displayed. Once the user selects, say, a 3 x 3 matrix, the data fields should immediately appear to accept inputs for a 3 x 3 matrix.

Can this be done with plain old JavaScript? If not, what language am I looking at that would provide this functionality?

Yes, I will miss them too. I got some links in there a LONG time ago, and they were left in through many edits, clean-outs, removal of garbage, etc. I had hoped, since much of the garbage was gone, the directory would live on for a while.

I wonder what is left to indicate to the search engines what is a good site? I mean, the directories are gone. Forums don't count. Social bookmarking does nothing. Fifteen or twenty years ago, when the Internet was a novelty and everybody was an amateur webmaster, everybody had a "Favorite Links" page, where a person might get their site listed. Even that is gone. So what is everybody doing? Are they just using Facebook? Is that what the search engines rely on now?! Mentions in social media?! I hope that is not the case. Results would be distorted by all the teenagers on Facebook, Instagram, SnapChat, etc. who don't dig too deep into a topic to examine what real quality is.

I am stumped. Not sure where to direct my SEO efforts now.

Hi, Reverend Jim.

Thanks again for the feedback.

ITRMCD is set to zero at the start of OPTSTD. If it never gets another value then it returns ITRMCD to OPTDRD and OPTDRD can return that value to the calling code where the parameter ITRMCD corresponds to the parameter INFO.

Okay. One more question before I go away, sit down, and try to finally crack this problem.

Let's say OPTSTD does not change the value of ITRMCD; ITRMCD was initialized to zero and does not change.
Program execution returns to OPTDRD.

However, the only way to break out of the main loop is if ITRMCD is not 0:

   CALL OPTSTD(N,XPLS,FPLS,GPLS,X,ITNCNT,ICSCMX,
+ ITRMCD,GRADTL,STEPTL,SX,FSCALE,ITNLIM,IRETCD,MXTAKE,
+ IPR,MSG)
   IF(ITRMCD.NE.0) GO TO 690

Otherwise, I don't see any way of getting past the GO TO 100 statement later:

GO TO 100
690

This GO TO statement is unconditional and goes back to the beginning of the main loop.
The only way to break out of this infinite loop is for ITRMCD to take on a non-zero value.
But then when execution returns to the calling sub-routine, INFO would also take on a non-zero number. It can never return with a 0 value.

Hi, Reverend Jim.

Thanks for looking at this code.

OPTDRD calls OPTSTD and in OPTSTD the value of ITRMCD is set to a non-zero value at
600 ITRMCD=JTRMCD

Okay, I see that.
Then, back in OPTDRD, ITRMCD has a non-zero value and it can break out of the loop and ultimately end the program with INFO having a non-zero value.

But how can the program ever end with INFO having a 0 value?
That is what is puzzling me; INFO = 0 is one of the valid error codes listed in the main program, but I don't see how it can ever happen.

I hope you have a large amount of test data that you can run through both the FORTRAN ...

I do not have a FORTRAN compiler and don't know where I could find one. I have heard about a free WATCOM compiler, but haven't gone to look for it yet. And I know next to nothing about it. I was hoping to avoid installing another piece of software, learning about it, debugging it, and taking a massive detour, to get back to where I am right now.

I am also considering running the code through f2c, to convert it to C code.
But f2c does a literal translation, including GO TO statements. I might end up looking at the exact same program, just in C syntax, so am not sure if anything would be gained.

In any …

Hi, Jim.

Thanks for the offer.

I am trying to translate the code for UNCMND, which does multi-dimensional optimization.
I believe the most up-to-date, complete, version of the source code is posted on the GAMS website: http://gams.nist.gov/cgi-bin/serve.cgi/Module/NMS/UNCMND/5673/

I have attached two PDF documents of the code for the sub-routines (UNCMND and OPTDRD) relevant to my question.

The main routine, UNCMND, uses the integer variable INFO as an error code to indicate the quality of the result. It can (supposedly) return a value of 0 to indicate an optimal solution.

UNCMND passes INFO into sub-routine OPTDRD, where it is referenced as the variable ITRMCD.

OPTDRD does the bulk of the work of computing the optimization.
Inside OPTDRD, I have highlighted the start and end points of the main loop in red. There is the label at 100, and the unconditional GO TO 100 statement.
Within this loop, another sub-routine is called, and the value of ITRMCD may be changed; however, the only way to break out of this loop is if ITRMCD takes on a non-zero value, which I have highlighted in purple.
Once that loop is broken, the routine finishes and program execution returns to UNCMND.
However, at no time is the value of ITRMCD (i.e., INFO) ever set back to 0.

I am baffled.
It is a Catch-22.
If ITRMCD, remains 0, it would not break out of the loop in OPTDRD.
But if it takes a non-zero value in …

Hello, Oleg.

Welcome to the DaniWeb forums. We are glad you joined us.

These forums are an excellent resource: lots of good information and many knowledgeable members here.

It is a great place for the sharing of ideas. I am sure you will learn a lot here.

See you around the forums.

I am trying to translate an old FORTRAN program to C++ and appear to have hit a brick wall.
I do not understand how one of the variables returned by a sub-routine can ever take a particular value.
I am not a FORTRAN master; maybe somebody here is more familiar with it.

Say . . .
Subroutine1 calls Subroutine 2, and
Subroutine2 calls Subroutine 3.

Is there any way for program execution to jump from Subroutine 3 directly back to Subroutine 1 without returning to Subroutine 2 first?

Computers are relatively inexpensive nowadays; perhaps you could purchase one for around $300 - $400 and use that as your Linux computer. It is about the same cost as registering for a night-school course at a local college. We can speculate all we want about what might happen, but you won't know for sure until you try it. And having a totally separate computer will save you a lot of headache if things go wrong. In fact, a basic install doesn't even need a top-of-the-line computer; I have known some people to find old computers/laptops that were being given away by colleagues or sold cheap on Craigslist. They would wipe them clean and then use those as their Linux box. Linux doesn't need a lot of GB or GHz to learn it. Make some inquiries. Everybody knows somebody who is upgrading their computer and throwing out their old one.

Hello, Jeni.

Welcome to the DaniWeb forums. We are glad you joined us.

These forums are an excellent resource: lots of good information and many knowledgeable members here.

It is a great place for the sharing of ideas. I am sure you will learn a lot here.

See you around the forums.

You should have a presence on all the sites mentioned so far.
You should especially not underestimate YouTube; YouTube is the second biggest search engine on the Internet after Google. But nobody thinks about it like that. So if you can make a brief video relevant to your product or service, and post it on YouTube with the appropriate tags, it is another opportunity to draw traffic to your site.

I use constantcontact (constantcontact.com) to send out a monthly newsletter, paid version.
It is double opt-in; subscribers sign up, are sent an email to confirm their subscription, and then are subscribed. That way, people can't just add a bunch of emails addresses to a database and then start sending out mass emails.

The other one that comes to mind quickly is IMN (imninc.com).

I came across several others a while ago, but they presently slip my mind. A search should turn up many,

Hello, Javier.

Welcome to the DaniWeb forums. We are glad you joined us.
These forums are an excellent resource: lots of good information and many knowledgeable members here.
It is a great place for the sharing of ideas. I am sure you will learn a lot here.

See you around the forums.

Hello, "MickyDarling".

Welcome to the DaniWeb forums. We are glad you joined us.

These forums are an excellent resource: lots of good information and many knowledgeable members here.

It is a great place for the sharing of ideas. I am sure you will learn a lot here.

See you around the forums.

Hi, Dani.

Whenever I do that, it asks me for their email address.

If you try to send a connection request from the person's Profile page, yes, you are prompted for that person's email address, or to indicate what company you have worked at together. However, if you back out to a main page, or go back to your own home page, you can do a search for that person by name, and then send a connection request from the search results page without knowing that person's email address.

For example, say you'd like to connect with George Washington.
Go back to your home page.
Enter "George Washington" in the search field and restrict the search to people, so you don't turn up everything.
On the results listing page, check the one you want to connect to and click the "send invitation" button. LinkedIn will send the invitation.
Don't go further. If you click through to the person's profile page, or elsewhere, you will need their email address. Stay on the search results page.
Done.

And, how are you meant to find their profile in the first place?

If you know their name or the company they work for, you can do searches. Either by name. Or by company. Restrict your search to company, otherwise you will turn up everything. I do this quite often when I am looking at a company that interests me. I do …

Hello, Raza.

Welcome to the DaniWeb forums. We are glad you joined us.

These forums are an excellent resource: lots of good information and many knowledgeable members here.

It is a great place for the sharing of ideas. I am sure you will learn a lot here.

See you around the forums.

Hi, Mike.

Send me your CV and a description of what you'd be interested in working on and what makes you qualified for doing that. Who knows, you might be able to do an internship with us.

Nice offer. Is that offer open to others?
Realistically, I doubt I would have any chance of being hired by Bosch (just a BASc, not a PhD). However, I am making a push right now to build up my network on LinkedIn. Would you mind if I send you a LinkedIn Connection request?

I am considering upgrading a computer from Windows 7 Home Premium to Windows 10.

However, before I start the process, I have a couple questions hopefully users here can answer:

1) Does the upgrade require user registration info? The computer came with Windows pre-installed, years ago, and I really don't like the prospect of having to turn my place upside down looking for the serial number or activation number. Is any of this info required for the upgrade?

2) Does the upgrade overwrite everything (i.e., effectively re-format the computer)?

Not sure if these services have what you want, but I'll throw a few more suggestions in to the ring for your consideration:
ADrive (adrive.com), SpiderOak (spideroak.com), and My Shoebox (shoeboxapp.com) for photos.

AFAIK, these services are pretty basic: they provide storage of documents. I don't know if they have the sort of synching you want, if multiple people are working on the same document at the same time. But in that case, how would the service know which person's changes take priority over others? Perhaps you might also look into a service like GIT, that allows multiple people to work on a project or document, tracks changes, and then commits the desired changes to the Master document. And then you could also have the option of backing up on GitHub.

P.S. - On second reading, since some of your team are not very computer savy, perhaps you should ignore my Git/GitHub suggestion.

Hello, Meysam.

Welcome to the DaniWeb forums. We are glad you joined us.

These forums are an excellent resource: lots of good information and many knowledgeable members here.

It is a great place for the sharing of ideas. I am sure you will learn a lot here.

Where is Jakarta Raya?

See you around the forums.

There are many ways to do this and many factors to consider.

Do you anticipate many users?
If not, you could simply contact your web host and request the capability to create more email accounts. Then, as the administrator, you'd have to manually create those accounts as people asked for them, and they'd go through their email client to check email.

Do you want the email service hosted on your web host, or are you okay with a third party hosting the service?
If you want it hosted on your own host, there is commercial software you can purchase to do this for you. For example, Alt-N Technologies (altn.com) used to provide such a product. Not sure if they still offer it, but it might be worth looking into, and searching for other, similar, products.

If you don't mind a third-party hosting the service, again, there are many options. Everyone.net is popular. Goggle does it too, and you get all the usual Gmail features. You can choose from free or paid options. In fact, I suppose many other webmail companies offer similar services; just ask around.

Thank you both very much for the advice. That seems to have solved the problem.
Will now mark the thread "Solved."

Thanks for the advice.

I will clean that up ASAP.

I am also curious about Line 64: set_time_limit(0);
Is this okay?
If it were changed to another number, would it cause the failures to be handled better (i.e., render rest of page instead of wait forever)?

Okay, attached is a text file that includes the section of PHP code for the parser. It has worked fine for years, but if you have any suggestions for making it fail gracefully, it would be appreciated. That way, the whole page wouldn't fail just because the RSS feed is failing.

It is the Space Exploration feed from Science Daily: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/sciencedaily/space_time/space_exploration

One of my websites recently had problems with the PHP news parser.
For many years, it worked fine. However, a while back it started acting up. See the attached image of a screenshot.

And since the PHP parser was the first block of code on the page, since it didn't work, the whole page didn't work.

Now I am trying to narrow down the problem. I am not good with PHP.
The hosting company's Tech Support guy told me the code is bad, even though I made no changes. (Why would it work fine for years and then randomly stop?!?!)
Somebody else suggested the problem might be with FeedBurner, because the feed is coming through FeedBurner.

The error message is, "XML error: not well-formed (invalid token) at line 5"

Does this information indicate the problem is with the PHP code, or the incoming feed?

Any direction/advice/guidance is appreciated.

"Is Privacy Important?"

Yes, it is.

I think we have the right to privacy, and to be anonymous, and the onus is not on individuals to explain why. It is one of our basic rights and government has no business usurping this right.

Philip Zimmermann, the creator of PGP, gave a good example. He asked, what if government passed a law that required people to mail their letters on postcards instead of sealed envelopes. That way, postal workers and government agents could read your letters easily. After all, if you are a law-abiding citizen with nothing to hide, there is no harm done.

But that is not the point. The government has no reason to be there in the first place.

It is one thing to post nonsense on social media sites.
It is another matter entirely when government gets into the act and writes laws taking away peoples' rights to go about their business without having Big Brother constantly looking over their shoulder. There has been too much of that already.

Like Philip Zimmermann also said, it is poor civic hygiene to enhance any infrastructure that strengthens the hand of a police state.

I must be part of a different generation, because I really dislike the direction the world is going (bigger, more invasive, militaristic government). I simply don't see the same resistance among younger people.

I think having a blog is important for legitimate companies, especially companies that want to participate in a hi-tech or web-related field.
Think about it this way: if you were considering doing business with a web development company that did not have a professional-looking website, a blog, or a presence in the Social Media (e.g. - LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc.), wouldn't that hurt the credibility of their claim to be a company that is active in the field?

Having a blog also offers the convenience of separating time-sensitive material from material that is not time-sensitive. A company can keep core rarely-changing information on the main website, but frequent updates can be made on the blog side of the site. Tips, background information, upcoming tradeshow attendances, pricing specials, etc, can all be posted on the blog, and the need to FTP onto the main site can be avoided. Simply logging in to make a post on a blog is a lot easier (for, say, the Marketing Department) than coding a brand-new page in HTML, PHP, etc..

Also, by having a blog, you open up a whole new field of interaction potential.
With a blog, you can comment on other blogs and generate interest in your own. You can submit it to blog directories or mention it in discussion forums. You can make the occassional post on topics not solely focused on the core theme of the main website, further opening up the potential for interaction with a wider audience.

How is a blog "type" website different from an actual blog?

You can use a blog site, or blog software, to create a non-blog site if you like.
Many people like the features and control offered without creating an actual blog.

Like "ewai1" suggested, Blogger is a convenient hosted platform. So are WordPress and Type Pad, And there are many others.

If you'd like to host your own site, again there are many options.

What is your site about? What features would you like? etc.

I think your request contradicts itself.
Either it is a top social media site, which is no-follow.
Or it is a site so obscure that it gives no value to your website.

The days of SEO by getting all the backlinks you can are gone. Almost all the best-known sites are no-follow, so I recommend rethinking your strategy. If you really want a presence on social media, stop thinking about whether the links are no-follow or not. Join some communities and take part in the discussions there. Write some good-quality articles and post them in your feed in each of the sites. That way, whenever somebody does a search on any of these social media sites, your site will be listed in the results. You have to treat each of them as an independent entity, each with its own search. It may not give you any benefits in terms of Google's results, but at least you'll get traffic in each of the social media sites.

Toby, did you ever get the issue resolved?

It is also affected by your LinkedIn account settings. If you have all your LinkedIn feeds disabled, nothing will come into Daniweb either. In my own Daniweb account, I used to connect to my LinkedIn account. However, I later edited all my LinkedIn Privacy settings to the most private:

(i) I made my Profile visible to nobody except myself,
(ii) I disabled all activity broadcasts,
(iii) I disabled all activity feeds,
etc, etc.

I just wanted to become invisible for a while.

So now my Daniweb account doesn't even indicate a LinkedIn icon, even though it is, indeed, posted in my Daniweb account.

Perhaps you have turned off something in LinkedIn that is necessary for Daniweb to link to it?

They are pretty self-explanatory.
"Delete" deletes something.
"Format" refers to several different ways of formatting: italics, font size, font style, colour, bold, centering, etc. Are you talking about text? A page? Forum-specific capabilities? ...

Umm.. where does the "discrete" part of this question come into play?

Also, I wouldn't call the matrix symmetric. When I think of symmetric matrices, I think in terms of N x N (i.e. - square matrices.) The system you post is 3 x 2, three rows by two columns, which is not square.

What language are you using?

Whichever language you are using, I agree with "sDJh": just use a counter and increment it each time you input a pair of numbers. You already have one loop to input the data, so use that loop. Creating a second loop just to count the entries in the array is unnecessary.