How to find all combinations of coins when given s

Question

I found a piece of code that I was writing for interview prep few months ago.

According to the comment I had, it was trying to solve this problem:

Given some dollar value in cents (e.g. 200 = 2 dollars, 1000 = 10 dollars), find all the combinations of coins that make up the dollar value. There are only pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters allowed. (quarter = 25 cents, dime = 10 cents, nickel = 5 cents, penny = 1 cent)

For example, if 100 was given, the answer should be:

4 quarter(s) 0 dime(s) 0 nickel(s) 0 pennies  
3 quarter(s) 1 dime(s) 0 nickel(s) 15 pennies  
etc.

This can be solved in both iterative and recursive ways, I believe. My recursive solution is quite buggy, and I was wondering how other people would solve this problem. The difficult part of this problem was making it as efficient as possible.

Answer 1

Java solution

import java.util.Arrays;
import java.util.Scanner;


public class nCents {



public static void main(String[] args) {

    Scanner input=new Scanner(System.in);
    int cents=input.nextInt();
    int num_ways [][] =new int [5][cents+1];

    //putting in zeroes to offset
    int getCents[]={0 , 0 , 5 , 10 , 25};
    Arrays.fill(num_ways[0], 0);
    Arrays.fill(num_ways[1], 1);

    int current_cent=0;
    for(int i=2;i<num_ways.length;i++){

        current_cent=getCents[i];

        for(int j=1;j<num_ways[0].length;j++){
            if(j-current_cent>=0){
                if(j-current_cent==0){
                    num_ways[i][j]=num_ways[i-1][j]+1;
                }else{
                    num_ways[i][j]=num_ways[i][j-current_cent]+num_ways[i-1][j];
                }
            }else{
                num_ways[i][j]=num_ways[i-1][j];
            }


        }


    }



    System.out.println(num_ways[num_ways.length-1][num_ways[0].length-1]);

}

}

Answer 2

Let C(i,J) the set of combinations of making i cents using the values in the set J.

You can define C as that:

(first(J) takes in a deterministic way an element of a set)

It turns out a pretty recursive function... and reasonably efficient if you use memoization ;)

Answer 3

The below java solution which will print the different combinations as well. Easy to understand. Idea is

for sum 5

The solution is

    5 - 5(i) times 1 = 0
        if(sum = 0)
           print i times 1
    5 - 4(i) times 1 = 1
    5 - 3 times 1 = 2
        2 -  1(j) times 2 = 0
           if(sum = 0)
              print i times 1 and j times 2
    and so on......

If the remaining sum in each loop is lesser than the denomination ie if remaining sum 1 is lesser than 2, then just break the loop

The complete code below

Please correct me in case of any mistakes

public class CoinCombinbationSimple {
public static void main(String[] args) {
    int sum = 100000;
    printCombination(sum);
}

static void printCombination(int sum) {
    for (int i = sum; i >= 0; i--) {
        int sumCopy1 = sum - i * 1;
        if (sumCopy1 == 0) {
            System.out.println(i + " 1 coins");
        }
        for (int j = sumCopy1 / 2; j >= 0; j--) {
            int sumCopy2 = sumCopy1;
            if (sumCopy2 < 2) {
                break;
            }
            sumCopy2 = sumCopy1 - 2 * j;
            if (sumCopy2 == 0) {
                System.out.println(i + " 1 coins " + j + " 2 coins ");
            }
            for (int k = sumCopy2 / 5; k >= 0; k--) {
                int sumCopy3 = sumCopy2;
                if (sumCopy2 < 5) {
                    break;
                }
                sumCopy3 = sumCopy2 - 5 * k;
                if (sumCopy3 == 0) {
                    System.out.println(i + " 1 coins " + j + " 2 coins "
                            + k + " 5 coins");
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

}

Answer 4

public class Coins {

static int ac = 421;
static int bc = 311;
static int cc = 11;

static int target = 4000;

public static void main(String[] args) {


    method2();
}

  public static void method2(){
    //running time n^2

    int da = target/ac;
    int db = target/bc;     

    for(int i=0;i<=da;i++){         
        for(int j=0;j<=db;j++){             
            int rem = target-(i*ac+j*bc);               
            if(rem < 0){                    
                break;                  
            }else{                  
                if(rem%cc==0){                  
                    System.out.format("\n%d, %d, %d ---- %d + %d + %d = %d \n", i, j, rem/cc, i*ac, j*bc, (rem/cc)*cc, target);                     
                }                   
            }                   
        }           
    }       
}
 }

Answer 5

This is a really old question, but I came up with a recursive solution in java that seemed smaller than all the others, so here goes -

 public static void printAll(int ind, int[] denom,int N,int[] vals){
    if(N==0){
        System.out.println(Arrays.toString(vals));
        return;
    }
    if(ind == (denom.length))return;             
    int currdenom = denom[ind];
    for(int i=0;i<=(N/currdenom);i++){
        vals[ind] = i;
        printAll(ind+1,denom,N-i*currdenom,vals);
    }
 }

Improvements:

  public static void printAllCents(int ind, int[] denom,int N,int[] vals){
        if(N==0){
            if(ind < denom.length) {
                for(int i=ind;i<denom.length;i++)
                    vals[i] = 0;
            }
            System.out.println(Arrays.toString(vals));
            return;
        }
        if(ind == (denom.length)) {
            vals[ind-1] = 0;
            return;             
        }

        int currdenom = denom[ind];
        for(int i=0;i<=(N/currdenom);i++){ 
                vals[ind] = i;
                printAllCents(ind+1,denom,N-i*currdenom,vals);
        }
     }

Answer 6

If the currency system allows it, a simple greedy algorithm that takes as many of each coin as possible, starting with the highest value currency.

Otherwise, dynamic programming is required to find an optimal solution quickly since this problem is essentially the knapsack problem.

For example, if a currency system has the coins: {13, 8, 1}, the greedy solution would make change for 24 as {13, 8, 1, 1, 1}, but the true optimal solution is {8, 8, 8}

Edit: I thought we were making change optimally, not listing all the ways to make change for a dollar. My recent interview asked how to make change so I jumped ahead before finishing to read the question.