Submit: Turn in your money.c source file using the turnin command on morbius.mscsnet.mu.edu or one of the other Systems Lab machines.

Work is to be completed individually. Be certain to include your name in the file. You may submit multiple times, but only the last turnin will be kept. The automatic submission system will not accept work after the deadline. (See turnin instructional video HERE. Note that the video is for a different course number, and that Morbius's domain name has changed since the video was made: morbius.mscs.mu.edu -> morbius.mscsnet.mu.edu)

Include a comment block at the very top of each file that contains the following:

/**
 * COSC 6270 - Project 1
 * Explain briefly the functionality of the program.
 * @author [your name]
 * Instructor [your instructor]
 * TA-BOT:MAILTO [your email address]
 */


Euros and Rupees and Yen, Oh My!

International Currency Converter

Whenever Lord Xinu (Dark Lord of the RISC) returns from an international business trip, he finds his pockets are full of international currency that cannot be used to purchase Raspberry Pi boards in the U.S.

Your task is to write a simple international currency converter. The converter will take an unformatted list of five allowable currencies, convert each to their equivalent in U.S. dollars, and print a final total when done.

Your converter should understand dollars ('$'), Euros ('€'), British pounds sterling ('£'), the Japanese Yen ('¥'), and the Indian Rupee ('₹').

You should use the getchar library function to read console input one character at a time. The use of any other library functions for input is not recommended at this time.

We have provided an example program for your reference, executable on Morbius as ~brylow/os/Projects/money.

Conversions

Conversion rates between international currencies change on a daily basis. For the sake of simplicity, we will use the rates that were in effect the day this assignment specification was written:

$1000 == £766 or €897 or ¥109940 or ₹70845.

You may assume that only integer values of currency will be entered, and no decimal points will appear in the input. Likewise, please use only integer arithmetic operations to perform your conversion, and output only truncated integer dollars. (Note that this means an answer of $0.99 is still just output as $0.)

Representation

The dollar sign ('$') is a regular ASCII character, a single byte in the system used nearly universally by computers to represent plain text. The other currency symbols, however, are all later additions to computer character sets. The Unicode Standard contains assignments for all of the currency symbols used in this project:

 

 

While all of these symbols can be represented by a simple two-byte encoding, the more common solution is to use a representation called UTF-8. This is the encoding actually used by Linux (as well as most web servers and e-mail clients) to store extended character values. The first 127 ASCII remain the same for reverse compatibility, but higher-numbered Unicode values are encoded with between two and four bytes.

What does all of this mean for you? When your program is reading or writing the currency symbols, you are actually going to use the byte combinations in the column marked "UTF-8" in Table 1 above.

Notes

• The Systems Lab (CU 310) is the primary development environment for COSC 6270. It is expected that you will learn to use the required tools for developing, testing, and submitting your projects. The Systems Lab machines are available locally in Cudahy 310, and can be accessed remotely via ssh using your CS Department credentials. (See D2L Laboratory Instructions for instructions for learning your credentials.) Free secure shell (ssh) clients are readily available for other platforms, including Windows machines at home or in the dorms. We recommend PuTTY for Windows, and the built-in ssh client in Terminal for MacOS users.
• The Systems Lab machines run the Linux operating system. If you need a refresher on using the UNIX environment, please see the UNIX Tutorial.
• This project can seem deceptively complex, but is quite tractable if you first take the time to design suitable helper functions, and test those function thoroughly before moving on to the overall converter. We encourage the disciplined practice of test-driven development.
• The internal data representation of the currency values can be assumed to be a int. You are not required to deal with overflow and underflow issues.
• Parsing input is always tedious, particularly when the input is not rigidly constrained with rules like, "all operands must be surrounded by space on both sides," (which is NOT a constraint for this assignment). Powerful tools for parsing are covered in COSC 4400 Compiler Construction and to a much lesser extent, COSC 3410 Programming Languages. In lieu of a parser-generator, consider drawing simple state diagrams for how to recognize the various currency symbols, or how to read an integer in base ten. In many cases with input of this type, it is useful to be able to put back a character of input once you realize you have read too far. Useful C routines for implementing this kind of buffering are presented in Section 4.3 of K&R, (getch() and ungetch()).
• Consider various operational and parsing errors that can take place. See the reference implementation for appropriate error messages.
• The reference implementation is considered an integral part of the specifications for this assignment. Project grades will be based in significant part upon an automated comparison of behavior against the reference implementation. Devise test cases to discover the expected behavior, and do your best to match it precisely. Creativity will be valued in later assignments, but first one must master the tools.
• Use the electronic turnin system to submit your work. The command is "turnin", followed by the name(s) of files(s) you wish to submit. The command "turnin -v" will print a listing verifying the contents of your submission. See "turnin -h" for a list of other relevant options. The system does not accept work after the deadline, and neither does the professor.

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[Revised 2020 Jan 16 00:56 DWB]