Topical Information

This program will help you demonstrate your mastery of branching and looping while giving you a chance to improve your mastery of function design.

Program Information

Fred's Gas'n'Go has just installed a car wash. They'd like the customers to be able to purchase a wash at the pump just like at the fancy stations. Fred's idea is very similar to that at your average Mobil™ or Shell™:

    +--->   Car wash?  --No-----+--->
    |         |                 |
    |        Yes                |
    |         |                 |
    |        \ /                |
    |         `                 |
    |      Super, Premium,      |
    |        or Ultra?          |
    |         |                 |
    |         |                 |
    |        \ /                |
    |         `                 |
    |       display price;      |
    +--No-- Price okay?         |
              |                 |
             Yes                |
              |                 |
             \ /                |
              `                 |
            print wash code ----+

The price for a Super wash is $5.00. A Premium wash is $6.00. And an Ultra wash is $8.00. These prices are subject to materials and maintenance costs, of course, and might have to be changed. (Hint: Making them a global constant would make them easily found and changed when the need arises!)

The user's choice of wash should be by the first letter of the wash name: S, P, or U. (Allow them to enter it by upper or lower case, of course...)

Use functions to break the problem into manageable pieces. Try to make your functions general/re-usable so you can get more mileage...er...use out of them later.

As an example, you might have the program interaction look something like (the parts in this style are typed by the user):

$ ./carwash.out

                 Welcome to Fred's Gas'n'Go Car Wash System!!!

Would you like a car wash today?  you becha!

Which wash would you like:  Super, Premium, or Ultra?  super...man

That will be $5.00, is that okay?  no way!  es muy dinero!

I'm sorry...


Would you like a car wash today?  YES!!!

Which wash would you like:  Super, Premium, or Ultra?  Ultra...man

That will be $8.00, is that okay?  No can do, kemo slabe...

I'm sorry...


Would you like a car wash today?  yuh...but I'm losing hope...

Which wash would you like:  Super, Premium, or Ultra?  premioso por favor

That will be $6.00, is that okay?  yeah...let me take out a loan first...


Good, your wash code is 5783210.  It will be good until noon on Friday.


Thank you for using the FGnGCWS!!

Endeavor to have a spot-free day!

$

Note how the user is allowed to enter whole words (or even phrases) instead of just the first characters of responses: yes instead of just y, ultra instead of just u, etc. (This should use nothing beyond basic input!) Note that you don't actually need the whole word to process their choice...but letting them enter it will make them feel better...

Don't worry about filling in the code and the time: that's another team member's job (see the options; *wink*). You can simply print the same thing all the time until you get their code to meld in to yours.

Be sure to look for any helpful resources you can in the notes on programming with ctime's time() function. You can never tell when something might come in handy!

This assignment is (Level 4).

Options

• Add (Level 1) to generate the wash code at random. It should be a 7-digit code with NO leading 0's.
  (Be careful to make sure you are actually getting spreading the codes around the 7-digit range. Don't let them all clump together in the first 30000 or so numbers...*HINT*)
• Add (Level 1) to re-use the functions from your time lab to determine the code termination time -- which should be 3 days from the current time.
  To make the time printout all neat like the above, you'll require a few extra functions to translate times into words (not all of them, just a few that have special names: noon, midnight, ...um...er... well, maybe just two. *grin*) and to find out what day of the week it is.
  Add an extra (Level 3) for doing the word/name translations for times and days of the week (and go ahead and do months while you're at it...no, I'm not kidding!).
  (Of course, you'll also have to add a part to the program which calculates the current date. This can be done just as in the time lab mentioned above.)
• Add (Level 1) to place either your random function(s) or your own supporting time function(s) in libraries. (This option must be combined with at least one of the previous two options. You can take this option once for each -- so if you do both of the previous options, you can do this twice and actually get (Level 2) from it.) (You can even re-use your random and time libraries from any labs you may have done. Doing so gets you an extra (Level 0.5) each so the total possible for this option is actually (Level 3)!)
• Add (Level 4) to remember your randomly generated codes so that you don't give out the same one twice during a run.
  (Hint: This will require a vector. You should not assume any maximum number of codes during a run.) (Hint 2: To find if you've seen something before would be a search through the vector.) (Hint 3: To remember that you've seen something would simply be to store it at the end of the current list.) (Hint 4: The vector should NOT be in a regular function, but in main. Otherwise it will disappear when the function returns and you'd lose all your codes!)
  For this to happen, you'll need another loop that wraps around the whole program until Fred enters the shutdown code when he's locking up (i.e. until the 'user' says they want to shut down the pump). (This would probably mean that the 'user' would enter something like s or shutdown at the "Would you like a car wash today?" question.) After all, if you aren't selling more than one car wash during a run, it makes little sense to keep the codes unique. *grin*

Total Level Possible

If you did all above options, this project could be worth as much as (Level 14.5).