Algorithm to determine coin combinations

Question

I was recently faced with a prompt for a programming algorithm that I had no idea what to do for. I\'ve never really written an algorithm before, so I\'m kind of a newb at t

Answer 1

For such a small number of coins you can write a simple brute force solution.

Something like this:

#include 
#include 
#include 

using namespace std;

vector v;

int solve(int total, int * coins, int lastI)
{
    if (total == 50) 
    {
        for (int i = 0; i < v.size(); i++)
        {
            cout << v.at(i) << ' ';
        }
        cout << "\n";
        return 1;
    }

    if (total > 50) return 0;

    int sum = 0;

    for (int i = lastI; i < 6; i++)
    {
        v.push_back(coins[i]);
        sum += solve(total + coins[i], coins, i); 
        v.pop_back();
    }

    return sum;
}


int main()
{
    int coins[6] = {2, 4, 6, 10, 15, 50};
    cout << solve(0, coins, 0) << endl;
}

A very dirty brute force solution that prints all possible combinations.

This is a very famous problem, so try reading about better solutions others have provided.