Display number in vertical format [closed] - c

Question

Closed. This question needs debugging details. It is not currently accepting answers.
Edit the question to include desired behavior, a specific problem or error, and the shortest code necessary to reproduce the problem. This will help others answer the question.
Closed 8 years ago.
Improve this question
I'm new to C. I have a class assignment to display a number in a vertical format. If the user enters 5678, the instructor want it to display vertically to the screen in a single column as:
8
7
6
5
Second part of assignment is to find the largest divisor of the same number.
I'm totally lost. I'm getting the NUM value from another function. formula seems to work on even numbers, but on odd.
int divisor (int NUM)
{
int index, count=0;
for(index=2;index<=(NUM/2);index=index+1)
{
if(NUM%index==0)
count++;
}
printf("\n\nThe largest divisor of %d is %d\n",NUM, index-1);
return(index);
}

Answer 1

To display the number vertically:
1. get least significant digit,
2. print it and print new line,
3. shift number to the right by one digit
4. goto 1
Algorithm terminates when the number is zero. Call the input number n; getting the least significant (rightmost) digit can be done with n % 10. Right shift can be done with n = n / 10.
For the second part, observe that the largest divisor cannot be more than n/2 (because n = 2 * n/2). So try all number from n/2 down to 1 and break once you find a divisor. You will find the largest divisor because you are considering numbers in decreasing order. To check that x divides y use y % x == 0.
A second way it to check numbers from sqrt(n) down to 1. If m divides n, we can write n = m * k for some k. Now you take max(m, n/m) and continue.
Hope this helps :)

Answer 2

For the first part, there are many ways to approach this. But, without using too many of the standard library functions which seems to be a level appropriate for the question, I think the easiest way would be to take the numbers as a character array. Then access each value through it's index in the character array. This requires only the stdio.h header file. Some quick notes: simply use printf to print the value contained at each index, and throw the newline \n character at the end. If you wanted convert the string to an integer, you can do that very easily using the function atoi() which can be found in stdlib.h. If you want to print out backward, you can simply traverse the array backward.
void displayvert(char str[])
{
int i;
for (i = 0; str[i] != '\0'; ++i) {
printf("%c\n", str[i]);
}
}
Also many ways to approach the second, but in this case for the second question I think I'd use the modulus operator and track the highest value where the result is zero. In order for this to work with the single user provided input, I actually needed atoi() which is in the stdlib.h header. Basically, starting from the value one you'll increase the value up the integer just below the value of 'num' itself. And, if the remainder is zero when you when you divide by it (the purpose of using the modulus operator) then you know it's divisible. Because we're ascending from 1 to the number itself, the last value to return a remainder of zero is the greatest common divisor.
void getgcd(int num)
{
int i, gcd;
// remember, you can't do x % 0!
for (i = 1; i < num; i++) {
if ((num % i) == 0 ) {
gcd = i;
}
}
printf("The greatest common divisor is: %d\n", gcd);
}
Main function and prototypes here so you can see how it all tied together. A couple of quick notes (1) 11 digits was arbitrary; but it's important to note that we used 10 digits for the total input value (you can add checks to this to enforce) and reserved the 11th (at index 10) to allow space for the null terminating character \0. (2) Use scanf to grab input; note that because character arrays do not require the address operator & because it defaults to that.
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
void displayvert(char str[]);
void getgcd(int num);
int main()
{
char input[11]; // additional character added for \0
printf("Please enter a value up to 10 digits: ");
scanf("%s", input);
displayvert(input);
getgcd(atoi(input));
return 0;
}