Question

I am writing a program that executes two operations on a structure distanceType which is compose of three integer members: feet, yards, and miles.The function convertYards takes a distance in yards that is greater than or equal to 1760 (because there are 1760 yards in a mile) and converts it to x miles, y yards, and z feet (i.e. distanceType). I’m having trouble with the function parameters. convertYards takes in one integer value and returns a distanceType. The problem is I am not sure how to define the function. Since it can accept either distance1 or distance2 (integer values), a small part of the code is below, the area with the “???” is what I am confused about.

struct distanceType
{
  int miles;
  int yards;
  int feet;
}

distanceType convertYards(int ???)  //Define convertYards

Any help is appreciated, thanks.

Answer 1

So something like the following code which has not been compiled so may need some changes but should capture the essence.

struct distanceType
{
  int miles;
  int yards;
  int feet;
}

distanceType convertYards(int nYards)
{
    distanceType distance;

    distance.miles = nYards / 1760;
    distance.yards = nYards - distance.miles * 1760;
    distance.feet = 0;   // since value is integer number of yards, feet is always zero
    return distance;
}

This this function would be used as follows:

int main ()
{
   distanceType dt1, dt2;
   int          y1 = 3500, y2 = 5700;

   dt1 = convertYards (y1);
   dt2 = convertYards (y2);

   printf (" %d yards = %d miles, %d yards, and %d feet", y1, dt1.miles, dt1.yards, dt1.feet);
   printf (" %d yards = %d miles, %d yards, and %d feet", y2, dt2.miles, dt2.yards, dt2.feet);
   return 0;
}