At the beginning of January 2015, the Software University has decided to carry out an IT Olympiad. The competition problems and their solutions in C# are available here.
In this article, I will present a way to resolve the second problem in Excel instead of C#. Pretty much it is a standard drawing problem, in which you get a number for an input and you return a picture. Like this:
As far as I am more or less into VBA, I have decided to try to resolve it, using Excel formula. As you see, the picture consists of two parts – the roof and the square. The roof could be considered also from two parts – the last line, where you have space and star after each other and the rest. Knowing this, it is time to code…
With the function draw_a_house(n) in Excel, we receive the house. Two additional marks are important. You need font SimHei or Consolas and Wrap Text should be activated. But it really looks impressive:
How it is done? I can bet that in C# it can be done with 5 or 6 times less code, but in VBA I had to define functions such as string_builder and once I was ready and it was working I was quite ok with it. The code is here:
|
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 |
Option Explicit Public Const STR_DOT = "." Public Const STR_DASH = "-" Public Const STR_STAR = "*" Public Const STR_PLUS = "+" Public Const STR_SPACE = " " Public Const STR_VER = "|" Public s_final As String ' Public Function draw_a_house(k As Long) As String 'works pretty good with Consolas or SimHei font in Excel Dim l_counter As Long Dim l_lines As Long Dim s_lines As String Dim s_result As String s_final = "" For l_counter = 1 To k s_result = string_builder(k - l_counter, STR_DOT) s_result = s_result + string_builder_special(l_counter * 2 - 1, k) s_result = s_result + string_builder(k - l_counter, STR_DOT) s_final = s_final + s_result & vbCrLf Next l_counter s_final = s_final + build_ceiling_and_floor(k) & vbCrLf For l_counter = 1 To k - 2 s_final = s_final + build_in_between(k) & vbCrLf Next l_counter s_final = s_final + build_ceiling_and_floor(k) draw_a_house = s_final End Function Public Function build_in_between(k As Long) As String Dim s_result As String Dim l_counter As Long s_result = string_builder(1, STR_VER) For l_counter = 1 To k * 2 - 3 s_result = s_result + string_builder(1, STR_SPACE) Next l_counter build_in_between = s_result + string_builder(1, STR_VER) End Function Public Function build_ceiling_and_floor(k As Long) As String Dim s_result As String s_result = string_builder(1, STR_PLUS) s_result = s_result + string_builder(k * 2 - 3, STR_DASH) build_ceiling_and_floor = s_result + string_builder(1, STR_PLUS) End Function Public Function string_builder_special(lines_number As Long, k As Long) As String Dim l_counter As Long If lines_number = k * 2 - 1 Then For l_counter = 1 To k * 2 - 1 string_builder_special = string_builder_special + IIf(l_counter Mod 2 = 1, STR_STAR, STR_SPACE) Next l_counter Exit Function End If string_builder_special = string_builder(1, STR_STAR) If lines_number > 1 Then string_builder_special = string_builder_special + string_builder(lines_number - 2, STR_SPACE) string_builder_special = string_builder_special + string_builder(1, STR_STAR) End If End Function Public Function string_builder(lines_number As Long, symbol As String) As String Dim counter As Long For counter = 1 To lines_number string_builder = string_builder + symbol Next counter End Function |
Available also in GitHub here.
Enjoy it! 🙂