Thread: Iterative functions

Hello world!

I am having a hard time dealing with a machine problem. The problem requires me to create a program that will enable the user to input the number of employees of a certain company. After that, the program must ask the user to input the data of each employee(Employee Number, Hours of Work, and Employee type--permanent or temporary). It will do the loop until all of the employees' data are stored. Then the program must compute for their salaries and display it on the screen in table format.

Now my problem is that I am not allowed to use Iterative constructs/functions. I am also not allowed to use function calls, strings, arrays, pointers, and the likes. I can only use the basic printf/scanf functions, variable declarations and the conditional statements(if-else and switch), plus the #define. No more. Another problem is that I don't know where to store the input values and how to print the table out.

Please help me.
I really hope you can help me with this.

Do you know how many employees are, or the max number? Can you use goto (I suppose not)?
The input values can be stored in variables. If you can't use arrays (why???) use structs, or just plain variables.

Also, can you use the define to create an array? Like a macro:

Code:

#define array(num) *(array+(num))

which will create effectively an array, if you can use malloc to allocate memory...

As for the print.... you just print every value, don't know where is the problem there. Elaborate a bit

Well thanks for the help!

Okay, this is the thing. the problem has been modified and now we are allowed to use iterations and function calls, plus the if-else and switch statements and #define[at last!].
but still I have a problem. Where can I put all those inputs? The maximum number of employees to be entered is 20. and how can i print them out. I can' use arrays, strings, pointers, structs, etc. Just the basic I/O of the stdio.h library, and variable declarations.

Originally Posted by matsp

Is this a trick question?
If you can't repeat something (iterate) in the code, and not call funcitons, then I doubt that you can solve the problem as described.

I would ask for clarification on this, because it seems like a very difficult to solve problem [yes, you could repeat the code, like this

Code:

... 
   if (num_employees > 1) 
      ... // ask employee one values and process it's calculation. 
   if (num_employees > 2)
      ... 
   if (num_employees > 3)
      ...

But it becomes highly unpractical to solve this way if the number of employees is bigger than a few dozen - one million [ok, so that's probably making it the worlds largest employer, but still] employees would make the code unmanageably large.]

I'm sure there's something that has gone wrong in the problem description - or it's just a trick question to prove the fallibility of the solution.

--
Mats

Well thanks for the help!

Okay, this is the thing. the problem has been modified and now we are allowed to use iterations and function calls, plus the if-else and switch statements and #define[at last!].
but still I have a problem. Where can I put all those inputs? The maximum number of employees to be entered is 20. and how can i print them out. I can' use arrays, strings, pointers, structs, etc. Just the basic I/O of the stdio.h library, and variable declarations.

Wait. If i would use the pseuocode you posted here, how will it run/work? What will the compiler do? Thanks a lot!

Originally Posted by matsp

Is this a trick question?

If you can't repeat something (iterate) in the code, and not call funcitons, then I doubt that you can solve the problem as described.

I would ask for clarification on this, because it seems like a very difficult to solve problem [yes, you could repeat the code, like this

Code:

... 
   if (num_employees > 1) 
      ... // ask employee one values and process it's calculation. 
   if (num_employees > 2)
      ... 
   if (num_employees > 3)
      ...

But it becomes highly unpractical to solve this way if the number of employees is bigger than a few dozen - one million [ok, so that's probably making it the worlds largest employer, but still] employees would make the code unmanageably large.]

I'm sure there's something that has gone wrong in the problem description - or it's just a trick question to prove the fallibility of the solution.

--
Mats