Question

I am trying to create a little php script that can make my life a bit easier.
Basically, I am going to have 21 text fields on a page where I am going to input 20 different numbers. In the last field I will enter a number let’s call it the TOTAL AMOUNT. All I want the script to do is to point out which numbers from the 20 fields added up will come up to TOTAL AMOUNT.

Example:

field1 = 25.23
field2 = 34.45
field3 = 56.67
field4 = 63.54
field5 = 87.54
....
field20 = 4.2

Total Amount = 81.90

Output: field1 + fields3 = 81.90

Some of the fields might have 0 as value because sometimes I only need to enter 5-15 fields and the maximum will be 20.

If someone can help me out with the php code for this, will be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

If you look at oezis algorithm one drawback is immediately clear: It spends very much time summing up numbers which are already known not to work. (For example if 1 + 2 is already too big, it doesn’t make any sense to try 1 + 2 + 3, 1 + 2 + 3 + 4, 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5, …, too.)

Thus I have written an improved version. It does not use bit magic, it makes everything manual. A drawback is, that it requires the input values to be sorted (use rsort). But that shouldn’t be a big problem 😉

function array_sum_parts($vals, $sum){
    $solutions = array();
    $pos = array(0 => count($vals) - 1);
    $lastPosIndex = 0;
    $currentPos = $pos[0];
    $currentSum = 0;
    while (true) {
        $currentSum += $vals[$currentPos];

        if ($currentSum < $sum && $currentPos != 0) {
            $pos[++$lastPosIndex] = --$currentPos;
        } else {
            if ($currentSum == $sum) {
                $solutions[] = array_slice($pos, 0, $lastPosIndex + 1);
            }

            if ($lastPosIndex == 0) {
                break;
            }

            $currentSum -= $vals[$currentPos] + $vals[1 + $currentPos = --$pos[--$lastPosIndex]];
        }
    }

    return $solutions;
}

A modified version of oezis testing program (see end) outputs:

possibilities: 540
took: 3.0897309780121

So it took only 3.1 seconds to execute, whereas oezis code executed 65 seconds on my machine (yes, my machine is very slow). That’s more than 20 times faster!

Furthermore you may notice, that my code found 540 instead of 338 possibilities. This is because I adjusted the testing program to use integers instead of floats. Direct floating point comparison is rarely the right thing to do, this is a great example why: You sometimes get 59.959999999999 instead of 59.96 and thus the match will not be counted. So, if I run oezis code with integers it finds 540 possibilities, too 😉

Testing program:

// Inputs
$n = array();
$n[0]  = 6.56;
$n[1]  = 8.99;
$n[2]  = 1.45;
$n[3]  = 4.83;
$n[4]  = 8.16;
$n[5]  = 2.53;
$n[6]  = 0.28;
$n[7]  = 9.37;
$n[8]  = 0.34;
$n[9]  = 5.82;
$n[10] = 8.24;
$n[11] = 4.35;
$n[12] = 9.67;
$n[13] = 1.69;
$n[14] = 5.64;
$n[15] = 0.27;
$n[16] = 2.73;
$n[17] = 1.63;
$n[18] = 4.07;
$n[19] = 9.04;
$n[20] = 6.32;

// Convert to Integers
foreach ($n as &$num) {
    $num *= 100;
}
$sum = 57.96 * 100;

// Sort from High to Low
rsort($n);

// Measure time
$start = microtime(true);
echo 'possibilities: ', count($result = array_sum_parts($n, $sum)), '<br />';
echo 'took: ', microtime(true) - $start;

// Check that the result is correct
foreach ($result as $element) {
    $s = 0;
    foreach ($element as $i) {
        $s += $n[$i];
    }
    if ($s != $sum) echo '<br />FAIL!';
}

var_dump($result);