6.7 Returning multiple values6 Assignments6.5 Bowling program6.6 Cross Country Trip Simulation

6.6 Cross Country Trip Simulation

Given a list of distances and gas prices, simulate a cross country trip in a car that has a 20 gallon tank and gets 20 miles to the gallon.

This means that your car can go 400 miles between gas stations.

The basic parameters for the trip are as follows. They should be #defined in your program so that they are easy to change.

  1. The car gets 20 miles to the gallon.
  2. The gas tank holds 20 gallons.
  3. The tank starts out with 20 gallons in it.
  4. You can run the tank "dry" as you pull into the next station.
  5. The trip is 3000 miles long.
At the beginning of your program print out:
  1. Your name
  2. CIS265 Louis Taber
  3. Lab: 6.3: Cross Country Trip
Figure out the lowest cost trip. You can "coast" into the next gas station on "vapors". I wouldn't want to do a real trip this way. (Though, I have run out of gas at least 3 times as I pulled into a gas station! This is NOT a recommendation.) Each time that you purchase gas print the following (in a table):
  1. The current distance.
  2. How much gas you purchased.
  3. The cost of the gas.
  4. How much gas was in the tank at prior to the purchase.
  5. How much gas is in the tank at after the purchase.
At the end of the trip, print out the following:
  1. Total gas purchased (gallons and dollars).
  2. Average cost of the gas per gallon.
  3. Miles per dollar.
  4. Remaining gas in tank. (Should be zero).
Read the data from a file. In my data file, the information is in two fields per line (or record). The first field is the distance to gas station from the departure point. The second field is the cost of gas at that point in dollars per gallon. (You may note some price gouging going on on this list.) The data set follows: 
  20 1.25
 300 0.90
 350 2.50
 520 4.25
 730 0.70
1060 4.17
1350 2.59
1390 1.11
1500 4.25
1530 3.24
1560 2.11
1590 1.73
1600 0.80
1800 5.97
2000 0.95
2250 2.34
2411 1.47
2549 1.09
2786 4.17
2900 0.99
The data set is available by anonymous FTP from
ftp://lt.tucson.az.us/pub/c/trip.dat An example program for reading the data file is available at:
ftp://lt.tucson.az.us/pub/c/read-gas.c Here is the example program: 
/* Louis Taber 3/26/2001
 *
 * --  Read trip info
 *
 * Second example program for fscanf()
 *
 *                               */

#include <stdio.h>
#include <errno.h>

int extern errno;

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
FILE *fp;
int milepost;
float price;


if( argc == 1 )   /* No arguments -- use std input */
  {
  fp= stdin;
  }
else
  {
  if((fp = fopen( argv[1], "r")) == NULL)
    {
    perror(argv[1]);
    printf(" Error number: %d\n", errno); 
    printf(" Error: %s\n", strerror(errno)); 
    printf("%s(line %d): can't open: %s\n",
           __FILE__, __LINE__,  argv[1]);
    return 1;
    }
  }

do
  {
  if( fscanf( fp, "%d %f \n",
                  &milepost, &price) <0 ) break;
  printf(" %6d %8.3f\n ",
         milepost, price);
  }  while( milepost != 0 );

fclose(fp);
return 0;
}

Turn in:

mark with: Please turn your lab in to Pima Community College employee in Santa Rita Building room A-115. Ask them to place it into the burgundy colored "CIS265 -- C Programming" folder in Louis Taber's mailbox.
Instructor: ltaber@pima.edu ** My new Home at GeoApps in Tucson ** The Pima College Site

6.7 Returning multiple values6 Assignments6.5 Bowling program6.6 Cross Country Trip Simulation