Cash

Accepting this assignment

• Head to GitHub and, after signing in, accept this assignment on GitHub Classroom.
• After about a minute, refresh the page and ensure you see “You’re ready to go!”.

Getting Started

Open VS Code.

Start by clicking inside your terminal window, then execute cd by itself. You should find that its “prompt” resembles the below.

$

Click inside of that terminal window and then execute

get50 cash

followed by Enter in order to make a directory called cash in your codespace. Take care not to overlook the space between get50 and cash or any other character for that matter!

Now execute

cd cash

to move yourself into (i.e., open) that directory. Your prompt should now resemble the below.

cash/ $

If all was successful, you should execute

ls

and see a file named cash.c. Executing code cash.c should open the file where you will type your code for this problem set. If not, retrace your steps and see if you can determine where you went wrong!

Greedy Algorithms

When making change, odds are you want to minimize the number of coins you’re dispensing for each customer, lest you run out (or annoy the customer!). Fortunately, computer science has given cashiers everywhere ways to minimize numbers of coins due: greedy algorithms.

According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), a greedy algorithm is one “that always takes the best immediate, or local, solution while finding an answer. Greedy algorithms find the overall, or globally, optimal solution for some optimization problems, but may find less-than-optimal solutions for some instances of other problems.”

What’s all that mean? Well, suppose that a cashier owes a customer some change and in that cashier’s drawer are quarters (25¢), dimes (10¢), nickels (5¢), and pennies (1¢). The problem to be solved is to decide which coins and how many of each to hand to the customer. Think of a “greedy” cashier as one who wants to take the biggest bite out of this problem as possible with each coin they take out of the drawer. For instance, if some customer is owed 41¢, the biggest first (i.e., best immediate, or local) bite that can be taken is 25¢. (That bite is “best” inasmuch as it gets us closer to 0¢ faster than any other coin would.) Note that a bite of this size would whittle what was a 41¢ problem down to a 16¢ problem, since 41 - 25 = 16. That is, the remainder is a similar but smaller problem. Needless to say, another 25¢ bite would be too big (assuming the cashier prefers not to lose money), and so our greedy cashier would move on to a bite of size 10¢, leaving him or her with a 6¢ problem. At that point, greed calls for one 5¢ bite followed by one 1¢ bite, at which point the problem is solved. The customer receives one quarter, one dime, one nickel, and one penny: four coins in total.

It turns out that this greedy approach (i.e., algorithm) is not only locally optimal but also globally so for America’s currency (and also the European Union’s). That is, so long as a cashier has enough of each coin, this largest-to-smallest approach will yield the fewest coins possible. How few? Well, you tell us!

Implementation Details

In cash.c, we’ve implemented most (but not all!) of a program that prompts the user for the number of cents that a customer is owed and then prints the smallest number of coins with which that change can be made. Indeed, main is already implemented for you. But notice how main calls several functions that aren’t yet implemented! One of those functions, get_cents, takes no arguments (as indicated by void) and returns an int. The rest of the functions all take one argument, an int, and also return an int. All of them currently return 0 so that the code will compile. But you’ll want to replace every TODO and return 0; with your own code. Specifically, complete the implementation of those functions as follows:

• Implement get_cents in such a way that the function prompts the user for a number of cents using get_int and then returns that number as an int. If the user inputs a negative int, your code should prompt the user again. (But you don’t need to worry about the user inputting, e.g., a string, as get_int will take care of that for you.) Odds are you’ll find a do while loop of help, as in mario.c!
• Implement calculate_quarters in such a way that the function calculates (and returns as an int) how many quarters a customer should be given if they’re owed some number of cents. For instance, if cents is 25, then calculate_quarters should return 1. If cents is 26 or 49 (or anything in between, then calculate_quarters should also return 1. If cents is 50 or 74 (or anything in between), then calculate_quarters should return 2. And so forth.
• Implement calculate_dimes in such a way that the function calculates the same for dimes.
• Implement calculate_nickels in such a way that the function calculates the same for nickels.
• Implement calculate_pennies in such a way that the function calculates the same for pennies.

Note that, unlike functions that only have side effects, functions that return a value should do so explicitly with return!

How to Test Your Code

For this program, try testing your code manually:

• If you input -1, does your program prompts you again?
• If you input 0, does your program output 0?
• If you input 1, does your program output 1 (i.e., one penny)?
• If you input 4, does your program output 4 (i.e., four pennies)?
• If you input 5, does your program output 1 (i.e., one nickel)?
• If you input 24, does your program output 6 (i.e., two dimes and four pennies)?
• If you input 25, does your program output 1 (i.e., one quarter)?
• If you input 26, does your program output 2 (i.e., one quarter and one penny)?
• If you input 99, does your program output 9 (i.e., three quarters, two dimes, and four pennies)?

Try a few others as well!

And execute the below to evaluate the style of your code using style50.

style50 cash.c

How to Submit

In your terminal, execute the below to submit your work. You may submit as many times as you would like up until the deadline.

submit50 cash