How do I do a “good” code dump for a comprehensive example?

Question

I came across a question where a comprehensive example would be very useful. So I wrote an example program showing one way to solve their problem.

My problem is that when I was done creating it, and testing to make sure it worked, it was over 400 lines in 18 files. My example included source code, header files, and scripts for building the example in a variety of circumstances.

It's a working and tested, so it's of huge value to illustrate the tricky solution, but because it's all there, my response was huge! Is there a better way of posting my code dump?

Edit:

I guess there isn't a current "best way" to include a large chunk of code, so I made this a feature request and tried to add some ideas.

Perhaps code entries that are longer then a certain number of lines, or ones that have been specifically marked could initially be displayed as "collapsed", and someone could expand them if they want to see them?

Or maybe, like attaching images, users with enough reputation could attach an archive of files. They could be displayed as "attached code" (initially collapsed also).

Some problems have simple answers that unfortunately touch disproportionately large parts of the program, or can be solved in slightly different ways depending on the environment. I feel that stackoverflow needs a way of capturing these large solutions. Sometimes, they're large chunks of code. In my case, the code was small, but there were many files.

Using github or a similar code repository is great, but we risk linkrot (even for big guys like github) and loose the community editing, commenting, and voting abilities.

I understand the problems that could come from with people dumping whole "I can't get this to work" packages, but surely we already have a solution for that in moderation.

Edit again:

I'm starting to see that this may have been already addressed in posts like

• Ability to upload code samples (ie: entire zipped project)?
• Please add a system to allow file uploads attached to questions and answers, and
• Uploading code for small projects

If you feel this a dupe, I'm open to having it "closed as already addressed"

Answer 1

At the end, you wrote a complete application that has some complexity (due to the large amount of files), but it's easy to build. I don't see any reason why you shouldn't share it on a Github or Google Code (or somewhere else).

Answer 2

I sympathize with your situation, as I've also wished for something like this too. But I know it's bad candy.

I feel that answers like this should be the exception, not the rule. Answers should be comprehensive, but I don't feel there is often a need for a solution that incurs more than a standard post can accept. After all, we're here to assist, but we're not consultants.

So I think it's good on the surface, but when you drill down to what it really entails, it's likely to encourage the kind of answers we don't typically want.

Answer 3

How about posting it as a Gist? That way, we can easily browse it, download it as a .zip archive or clone it as a Git repository, which is much easier than having to manually copy-paste everything from SO. Of course, there is some danger of link rot by having it on an external site. I would really like it if SO was better integrated with some such service, similar to how it works with images on imgur.

Answer 4

400 lines isn't that much. You get up to 30,000 characters per answer, and code blocks truncate to 25 lines. For example, this answer contains a program that prints the numbers from 1 to 1000 without using a loop or conditional. It's quite a few lines, but it's fine to include in an answer.

int main(void) {
    printf("1\n");
    printf("2\n");
    printf("3\n");
    printf("4\n");
    printf("5\n");
    printf("6\n");
    printf("7\n");
    printf("8\n");
    printf("9\n");
    printf("10\n");
    printf("11\n");
    printf("12\n");
    printf("13\n");
    printf("14\n");
    printf("15\n");
    printf("16\n");
    printf("17\n");
    printf("18\n");
    printf("19\n");
    printf("20\n");
    printf("21\n");
    printf("22\n");
    printf("23\n");
    printf("24\n");
    printf("25\n");
    printf("26\n");
    printf("27\n");
    printf("28\n");
    printf("29\n");
    printf("30\n");
    printf("31\n");
    printf("32\n");
    printf("33\n");
    printf("34\n");
    printf("35\n");
    printf("36\n");
    printf("37\n");
    printf("38\n");
    printf("39\n");
    printf("40\n");
    printf("41\n");
    printf("42\n");
    printf("43\n");
    printf("44\n");
    printf("45\n");
    printf("46\n");
    printf("47\n");
    printf("48\n");
    printf("49\n");
    printf("50\n");
    printf("51\n");
    printf("52\n");
    printf("53\n");
    printf("54\n");
    printf("55\n");
    printf("56\n");
    printf("57\n");
    printf("58\n");
    printf("59\n");
    printf("60\n");
    printf("61\n");
    printf("62\n");
    printf("63\n");
    printf("64\n");
    printf("65\n");
    printf("66\n");
    printf("67\n");
    printf("68\n");
    printf("69\n");
    printf("70\n");
    printf("71\n");
    printf("72\n");
    printf("73\n");
    printf("74\n");
    printf("75\n");
    printf("76\n");
    printf("77\n");
    printf("78\n");
    printf("79\n");
    printf("80\n");
    printf("81\n");
    printf("82\n");
    printf("83\n");
    printf("84\n");
    printf("85\n");
    printf("86\n");
    printf("87\n");
    printf("88\n");
    printf("89\n");
    printf("90\n");
    printf("91\n");
    printf("92\n");
    printf("93\n");
    printf("94\n");
    printf("95\n");
    printf("96\n");
    printf("97\n");
    printf("98\n");
    printf("99\n");
    printf("100\n");
    printf("101\n");
    printf("102\n");
    printf("103\n");
    printf("104\n");
    printf("105\n");
    printf("106\n");
    printf("107\n");
    printf("108\n");
    printf("109\n");
    printf("110\n");
    printf("111\n");
    printf("112\n");
    printf("113\n");
    printf("114\n");
    printf("115\n");
    printf("116\n");
    printf("117\n");
    printf("118\n");
    printf("119\n");
    printf("120\n");
    printf("121\n");
    printf("122\n");
    printf("123\n");
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    printf("125\n");
    printf("126\n");
    printf("127\n");
    printf("128\n");
    printf("129\n");
    printf("130\n");
    printf("131\n");
    printf("132\n");
    printf("133\n");
    printf("134\n");
    printf("135\n");
    printf("136\n");
    printf("137\n");
    printf("138\n");
    printf("139\n");
    printf("140\n");
    printf("141\n");
    printf("142\n");
    printf("143\n");
    printf("144\n");
    printf("145\n");
    printf("146\n");
    printf("147\n");
    printf("148\n");
    printf("149\n");
    printf("150\n");
    printf("151\n");
    printf("152\n");
    printf("153\n");
    printf("154\n");
    printf("155\n");
    printf("156\n");
    printf("157\n");
    printf("158\n");
    printf("159\n");
    printf("160\n");
    printf("161\n");
    printf("162\n");
    printf("163\n");
    printf("164\n");
    printf("165\n");
    printf("166\n");
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    printf("168\n");
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    printf("177\n");
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    printf("180\n");
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    printf("182\n");
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    printf("184\n");
    printf("185\n");
    printf("186\n");
    printf("187\n");
    printf("188\n");
    printf("189\n");
    printf("190\n");
    printf("191\n");
    printf("192\n");
    printf("193\n");
    printf("194\n");
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    printf("197\n");
    printf("198\n");
    printf("199\n");
    printf("200\n");
    printf("201\n");
    printf("202\n");
    printf("203\n");
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    printf("205\n");
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    printf("211\n");
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    printf("213\n");
    printf("214\n");
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    printf("216\n");
    printf("217\n");
    printf("218\n");
    printf("219\n");
    printf("220\n");
    printf("221\n");
    printf("222\n");
    printf("223\n");
    printf("224\n");
    printf("225\n");
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    printf("228\n");
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    printf("230\n");
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    printf("808\n");
    printf("809\n");
    printf("810\n");
    printf("811\n");
    printf("812\n");
    printf("813\n");
    printf("814\n");
    printf("815\n");
    printf("816\n");
    printf("817\n");
    printf("818\n");
    printf("819\n");
    printf("820\n");
    printf("821\n");
    printf("822\n");
    printf("823\n");
    printf("824\n");
    printf("825\n");
    printf("826\n");
    printf("827\n");
    printf("828\n");
    printf("829\n");
    printf("830\n");
    printf("831\n");
    printf("832\n");
    printf("833\n");
    printf("834\n");
    printf("835\n");
    printf("836\n");
    printf("837\n");
    printf("838\n");
    printf("839\n");
    printf("840\n");
    printf("841\n");
    printf("842\n");
    printf("843\n");
    printf("844\n");
    printf("845\n");
    printf("846\n");
    printf("847\n");
    printf("848\n");
    printf("849\n");
    printf("850\n");
    printf("851\n");
    printf("852\n");
    printf("853\n");
    printf("854\n");
    printf("855\n");
    printf("856\n");
    printf("857\n");
    printf("858\n");
    printf("859\n");
    printf("860\n");
    printf("861\n");
    printf("862\n");
    printf("863\n");
    printf("864\n");
    printf("865\n");
    printf("866\n");
    printf("867\n");
    printf("868\n");
    printf("869\n");
    printf("870\n");
    printf("871\n");
    printf("872\n");
    printf("873\n");
    printf("874\n");
    printf("875\n");
    printf("876\n");
    printf("877\n");
    printf("878\n");
    printf("879\n");
    printf("880\n");
    printf("881\n");
    printf("882\n");
    printf("883\n");
    printf("884\n");
    printf("885\n");
    printf("886\n");
    printf("887\n");
    printf("888\n");
    printf("889\n");
    printf("890\n");
    printf("891\n");
    printf("892\n");
    printf("893\n");
    printf("894\n");
    printf("895\n");
    printf("896\n");
    printf("897\n");
    printf("898\n");
    printf("899\n");
    printf("900\n");
    printf("901\n");
    printf("902\n");
    printf("903\n");
    printf("904\n");
    printf("905\n");
    printf("906\n");
    printf("907\n");
    printf("908\n");
    printf("909\n");
    printf("910\n");
    printf("911\n");
    printf("912\n");
    printf("913\n");
    printf("914\n");
    printf("915\n");
    printf("916\n");
    printf("917\n");
    printf("918\n");
    printf("919\n");
    printf("920\n");
    printf("921\n");
    printf("922\n");
    printf("923\n");
    printf("924\n");
    printf("925\n");
    printf("926\n");
    printf("927\n");
    printf("928\n");
    printf("929\n");
    printf("930\n");
    printf("931\n");
    printf("932\n");
    printf("933\n");
    printf("934\n");
    printf("935\n");
    printf("936\n");
    printf("937\n");
    printf("938\n");
    printf("939\n");
    printf("940\n");
    printf("941\n");
    printf("942\n");
    printf("943\n");
    printf("944\n");
    printf("945\n");
    printf("946\n");
    printf("947\n");
    printf("948\n");
    printf("949\n");
    printf("950\n");
    printf("951\n");
    printf("952\n");
    printf("953\n");
    printf("954\n");
    printf("955\n");
    printf("956\n");
    printf("957\n");
    printf("958\n");
    printf("959\n");
    printf("960\n");
    printf("961\n");
    printf("962\n");
    printf("963\n");
    printf("964\n");
    printf("965\n");
    printf("966\n");
    printf("967\n");
    printf("968\n");
    printf("969\n");
    printf("970\n");
    printf("971\n");
    printf("972\n");
    printf("973\n");
    printf("974\n");
    printf("975\n");
    printf("976\n");
    printf("977\n");
    printf("978\n");
    printf("979\n");
    printf("980\n");
    printf("981\n");
    printf("982\n");
    printf("983\n");
    printf("984\n");
    printf("985\n");
    printf("986\n");
    printf("987\n");
    printf("988\n");
    printf("989\n");
    printf("990\n");
    printf("991\n");
    printf("992\n");
    printf("993\n");
    printf("994\n");
    printf("995\n");
    printf("996\n");
    printf("997\n");
    printf("998\n");
    printf("999\n");
    return 1000;
}

See? Not so bad. The whole answer fits on my screen.

Of course, you should be careful to call out important elements outside of the full code-dump. For example, if you scroll to the bottom of the above block, you'll find:

return 1000; 

Something like this probably deserves explanation; real programs will probably contain more of these.

Also, you noted that you have some 18 files. That's...interesting; I'm not sure what language you're programming in but I'd be unlikely to have 18 files for 400 lines to solve a single problem. Perhaps separate code blocks are merited, perhaps not. Consider condensing to a single file if applicable.