[erlang-questions] Help Please

Jesper Louis Andersen jesper.louis.andersen@REDACTED
Fri Nov 9 11:05:20 CET 2012


Lucky,

the purpose of an exercise is to train you in working with a new programming language. You need to sit down and make an attempt at solving the problem yourself. Therein lies the wisdom and learning. I suggest that you start out by reading through the problem description and then write down code for the problem at hand. If you have a concrete question as to how a certain part of Erlang works, I am sure you will get a lot of helpful answers, but no, we won't solve your homework for you.

In fact, why pry the delight of having solved it yourself?

Some hints to get you started though:

A. You have a .csv file. It should definitely be read in (see the 'file' module in the documentation of erlang at erlang.org).
B. You must find an internal representation in memory of the file in question.
C. You must manipulate said representation until it matches the desired result.
D. You must format and print out the result. Perhaps the io and io_lib modules can help (beware, they are slightly different in nature. Understanding the difference is important).

Jesper Louis Andersen
  Erlang Solutions Ltd., Copenhagen



On Nov 9, 2012, at 8:31 AM, Lucky Khoza <mrkhoza@REDACTED> wrote:

> Hi, 
> 
> May you kindly help with the exercise below using Erlang [I am new Erlang Development]:
> 
> Introduction
> 
> Meet Mr. and Mrs. Hollingberry. Recently retired, Mr. Hollingberry has decided to move to sunny South Africa and open up a small local convenience store to keep him and Mrs. Hollingberry out of mischief.
> 
> Alas, it turned out not be such a laid-back job as he had hoped...
> 
> The Problem
> 
> One of their current problems is printing price tags on their fresh produce. Every morning, as soon as the various produce have been delivered, Mrs. Hollingberry enters it into a program her nephew had written.
> 
> The result is a comma-seperated file that includes, among other fields, the cost price (in cents) and delivery date of each product.
> 
> The Task
> 
> Your job is to write a program that reads the csv file and then creates a new file that will be used to print out the price tags.
> 
> The Input File
> 
> An example csv file is in this directory (produce.csv). We use the following fields:
> 
> •    Supplier ID.
> All suppliers are equal, but some are more equal than others.
> 
> •    Product code.
> This tells us what kind of produce we're dealing with.
> 
> •    Description.
> We can print part of this on the price tag.
> 
> •    Delivery date.
> YYYY-MM-DD. We use this to calculate the sell-by date.
> 
> •    Cost price.
> In cents. We use this to calculate the selling price.
> 
> •    Unit count.
> We need to print a price tag for each item delivered.
> 
> The Output File
> 
> The price file has 3 fields on each line: the selling price, the sell-by date and a product description.
> 
> The price file is in fixed-width format, because the label printer has limited space (50 characters) for each price tag. Each line in the price file will cause one price tag to be printed.
> 
> The selling price takes up 9 characters. One currency symbol (R) and 8 digits where Rands and cents are seperated by a period: R99999.99
> 
> Mr Hollingberry says we shouldn't worry about larger amounts. If he ever sells something for a 100 grand he will have to retire again, and he can't take that kind of stress again.
> 
> The sell-by date, just like the delivery date in the input file, is in YYYY/MM/DD format (10 characters).
> 
> The remaining 31 characters is used for the product description.
> 
> A typical line in the price file will look like this:
> 
> R 19.922012/05/26Apples 1kg Green. They are very
> 
> The Business Rules
> 
> You have to calculate the selling price and the sell-by date. Luckily we can use the description just as it is in the csv file. Well, the first 31 characters of it anyway.
> 
> Markup Rules
> 
> •    The markup for apples is 40%.
> •    The markup for bananas is 35%.
> •    The markup for berries is 55%.
> •    The markup for anything else 50%.
> Premium Produce (tm)
> 
> Some suppliers are dedicated Premium Produce (tm) suppliers. The customer has to believe that they are buying something better than usual. We do this by making the packaging look nice, and by increasing the price. The suppliers already took care of the nice packaging, you now have to make it expensive. Anything supplied by a Premium Produce (tm) supplier gets an additional 10% markup, and then the price is rounded up to the nearest Rand. For example, if a product costs R25.11 after the extra 10% markup has been applied, you need to round it up to R26. The Premium Produce suppliers currently are: * Promise Mashangu (Supplier ID 219) * Karel Visser (Supplier ID 204)
> 
> Sell-by Dates
> 
> •    Apples have to be sold 2 weeks after the date of delivery.
> •    Bananas have to be sold 5 days after the date of delivery.
> •    All other types of fruit has to be sold 1 week after the date of delivery.
> Supplier Troubles
> 
> One the suppliers, Susan Windler (Supplier ID 32), has been known to deliver fruit that is not quite as fresh as that of the other suppliers. Mr. Hollingberry has decided to handle this quietly, by ensuring that the sell-by date for anything delivered by Susan is always 3 days earlier than normal. Come to think of it, Togetherness Tshabalala (Supplier ID 101), also needs to be on this list.
> 
> Product Codes
> 
> •    Fruit has product codes ranging from 1000 to 1999.
> •    Apples specifically have product codes ranging from 1100 to 1199.
> •    Bananas have product codes ranging from 1200 to 1299.
> •    Berries have product codes ranging from 1300 to 1399.
>  
>  
> Kindest Regards
> Lucky KHoza 
> 
> 
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