Class Scheduler

No need to panic and make bad decisions when you're up against nasty surprises during college registration days. Class Scheduler takes the drudgery out of calculating all possible section combinations of the courses you need to take each semester. This BASIC program works on all 8-bit Atari computers with at least 48K memory. A disk drive is required.

Watch out, college student! It's the start of another semester and once again you are about to enter- the Registration Zone!!

In the hellish heat and stuffiness of an overcrowded college gym, long lines of student victims snake slowly towards the high altars of the registration tables. Silent prayers lie choked in the throats of hundreds of students as they wend their way from table to table. "Oh please, let there be an English 101 class available before 4:30 p.m. on the same days as the 8:30 a.m. Computer Science class I just got stuck with."

Putting together a humanly endurable schedule of classes is the first challenge you must meet every semester as you struggle to obtain your higher education. How many times have you spent hours trying to devise a civilized class schedule and then waited endlessly in a registration line, only to be coldly informed that your first, second and third choice of class sections are now closed?

Your only remaining class possibilities meet at the crack of dawn or at the last rays of sunset. All your prior scheduling efforts have gone down the tube. You must now improvise frantically to complete a line-up of classes.

Well, my Class Scheduler program can't guarantee that you'll be able to set up a one-hour break between your Physical Education period and the Chemistry Lab at the opposite end of the campus. But at least you can show up for Registration Day armed with printouts of every possible schedule for which there are no time conflicts. So you won't fall victim to last-minute errors when you make the best choice among whatever classes are still available.

Class Scheduler is an Atari BASIC program that automates all the alternative scheduling choices. Just type in the times for each section of the classes you want to take. The program will show you all possible schedules for which there are no time conflicts. Each schedule is displayed on the screen. You can press a key to look at the next schedule, or press [START] to copy the screen to the printer.

GETTING SOME CLASS

Beat those college registration blues. Type in Listing 1, CLASS.BAS, check it with TYPO II and SAVE a copy before you RUN it. At the end of the program are some data statements that must be entered correctly, otherwise you could lock up your computer. The data is for the [BREAK] key enable/disable routine.

Class Scheduler gets its data from a class file you create with Listing 2. Type in Listing 2, CLASSMAK.BAS, check it with TYPO II and SAVE a copy before you RUN it.

When RUN, Listing 2 will ask you to type in a filename for the class file it will create. Next, it will ask you for the name of the first class you want to schedule. Type in a five-character name, such as CS150, and press [RETURN]. Then, it will ask you how many sections are available for this course.

Next, it will ask you for the starting and ending times of the first course section for every day in the week. Type in the time using a colon to separate the hour from the minute. For example, 10:35, 8:00 and 12:30 are all legal values, but 1035, 0800 and 1230 are not. If a section does not meet at all on a particular day, just type [RETURN] instead of its starting time.

Note that the program handles daytime classes only. Times from 7:00 a.m. to noon are considered morning, while 1:00 to 6:00 p.m. is considered afternoon. After all the sections of a course are typed in, the program will show you the data you typed in, and ask you if it is correct. If so, type Y [RETURN] and then type in the section schedules for your next course. Otherwise, type N [RETURN] and re-type the class data.

Once you've typed in the section schedules for all of your classes, press [RETURN] at the "Name of Class#" prompt and your schedules will be saved to disk.

Now, RUN Listing 1, type in the name of your data file, and it will show you all possible schedules for which there are no time conflicts. When you see a schedule you like, turn on your printer, press [START] and Class Scheduler will print it for you.

Listing 1: CLASS.BAS Download

Listing 2: CLASSMAK.BAS Download