10.10. Counting

A good approach to problems like this is to think of simple functions that are easy to write, and that might turn out to be useful. Then you can combine them into a solution. This approach is sometimes called bottom-up design. Of course, it is not easy to know ahead of time which functions are likely to be useful, but as you gain experience you will have a better idea.

Also, it is not always obvious what sort of things are easy to write, but a good approach is to look for subproblems that fit a pattern you have seen before.

Back in Section 7.9 we looked at a loop that traversed a string and counted the number of times a given letter appeared. You can think of this program as an example of a pattern called “traverse and count.” The elements of this pattern are:

• A set or container that can be traversed, like a string or a vector.

• A test that you can apply to each element in the container.

• A counter that keeps track of how many elements pass the test.

In this case, I have a function in mind called howMany that counts the number of elements in a vector that equal a given value. The parameters are the vector and the integer value we are looking for. The return value is the number of times the value appears.

int howMany (const vector<int>& vec, int value) {
  int count = 0;
  for (size_t i = 0; i < vec.size(); i++) {
    if (vec[i] == value) count++;
  }
  return count;
}

Take a look at the active code below which uses the howMany function. Run the code to see how many times the target appears in the vector! Feel free to modify the code and experiment around.

#include <iostream> #include <vector> using namespace std; vector<int> randomVector (int n, int upperBound); void printVector (const vector<int>& vec); int howMany (const vector<int>& vec, int value); int main() { int numValues = 20; int upperBound = 10; int target = 6; vector<int> vector = randomVector (numValues, upperBound); printVector (vector); cout << endl; cout << "The number " << target << " appears " << howMany(vector,target) << " times in our vector!"; } ==== int howMany (const vector<int>& vec, int value) { int count = 0; for (size_t i = 0; i < vec.size(); i++) { if (vec[i] == value) count++; } return count; } vector<int> randomVector (int n, int upperBound) { vector<int> vec (n); for (size_t i = 0; i < vec.size(); i++) { vec[i] = rand() % upperBound; } return vec; } void printVector (const vector<int>& vec) { for (size_t i = 0; i < vec.size(); i++) { cout << vec[i] << " "; } }

Q-2: Which of the following is the best definition of bottom-up design?

• a method of programming where you write simple "helper" functions that are later incorporated into larger functions
• Correct! Bottom-up design starts with a lot of small functions and assembles them into a few larger ones that accomplish a task.
• a method of programming in which you tackle the largest functions first, and save the simple functions for later
• Incorrect! This is describing top-down design.
• a method of programming where you break the task down into smaller and smaller components until it cannot be simplified further
• Incorrect! This is describing top-down design.
• a method of programming where you use the minimum number of functions to accomplish the task
• Incorrect! Bottom-up design uses many simple functions rather than a few complex ones, so it is not minimizing the number of functions being used.

Construct a block of code that counts how many numbers are between lowerbound and upperbound inclusive.

        int just_right(const vector<int>& vec, int lowerbound, int upperbound) {
---
   int count = 0;
---
   for (size_t i = 0; i < vec.size(); i++) {
---
   for (size_t i = 0; i > upperbound; i++)                         #paired
---
      if (vec[i] >= lowerbound && vec[i] <= upperbound) {
         count++;
---
      if (vec[i] > lowerbound && vec[i] < upperbound) {                         #paired
         count++;
---
      }
   }
   return count;
}
        

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