[Tutor] Poor style to use list as "array"?

[bob gailer]

Angus Rodgers wrote:
> The problem this time is, given an amount of US currency in cents
> (and less than a dollar), to print out a description of the coins
> needed to represent it, using the smallest number of coins.  E.g.:
>
> How many cents this time? 59
> 2 quarters, 1 nickel and 4 pennies.
>
> How many cents this time? 55
> 2 quarters and 1 nickel.
>
> How many cents this time? 75
> 3 quarters.
>
> My program relaxes the restriction to amounts less than a dollar,
> and initialises the necessary data structures as follows:
>
> denom = ['dollar', 'quarter', 'dime', 'nickel', 'penny']
> value = [100, 25, 10, 5, 1]
> LEN = 5
> plural = [None] * LEN
> plural[-1] = 'pennies'
> count = [None] * LEN   # Kludge
>   

I'm inclined to use a class. I omitted the input and loop for "simplicity".

class Coin:

  def __init__(self, name, value, plural=None):
    self.name = name
    self.value = value
    if plural:
      self.plural = plural
    else:
      self.plural = self.name + 's'
    self.count = 0

  def display(self):
    if self.count == 0:
      return None
    if self.count == 1:
      return "%d %s" % (self.count, name)
    else:
      return "%d %s" % (self.count, self.plural)
    
coins = Coin('dollar', 100), Coin('quarter', 25), Coin('dime', 10), 
Coin('nickel', 5), Coin('penny', 1, 'pennies')
amnt = 99
buff = []
for coin in coins:
  (coin.count, amnt) = divmod(amnt, coin.value)
  d = coin.display()
  if d:
    buff.append(d)
if len(buff) < 2:
  print buff
else:
  print ', '.join(buff[:-1]) + " and " + buff[-1]
 
> I use the list 'count' as a kind of array, so that e.g. count[-1]
> is the number of pennies needed, count[2] is the number of dimes
> needed, and so on.  Any initial values I might store as elements
> of the list are never used, hence the use of 'None'. (The use of
> 'None' in the list 'plural' is much more defensible, I think, as
> it is used to denote the formation of a regular plural by adding
> 's' to the name.) Instead, the actual values are assigned in a
> 'for' loop, as follows:
>
> for i in range(LEN - 1):
>     (count[i], amnt) = divmod(amnt, value[i])
>
> This feels like a bit of a cheat, as if I am trying to program in
> Python as if it were some other more familiar language.  Should I
> have coded this differently?
>
> The full source code is here, in case anyone wants to look at it
> (but I'm not soliciting any more attention, as I've already been
> given quite a lot of it, and fear being offered the comfy chair!):
> <http://python.pastebin.com/d5e321ae0>   (retention: 1 day)
>
> Could I have used dictionaries instead, with the denomination names
> as keys?  Is it possible to guarantee a sequence in which the keys
> of a dictionary are iterated through? (If not, I suppose I could
> keep the list 'denom' as it is here, and iterate through it with
> "for key in denom:", although this seems a bit redundant.)
>   


-- 
Bob Gailer
Chapel Hill NC
919-636-4239