I have a quick question for a programming exercise in pseudocode.?

Question

Here's my program:

Display “Enter the amount of the purchase.”

Input amount

Set state = amount * .04

Set county = amount * .02

Set tax = state + county

Set total = amount + tax

Display “The amount of the purchase is $”, amount

Display “The state sales tax is $”, state

Display “The county sales tax is $”, county

Display “The total sales tax is $”, tax

Display “The total of the sale is $”, total

My question is whether or not I need to set amount equal to 0 at the beginning.

Answer 1

I wouldnt think you would need to. Because its not like your performing arithmatic on the amount variable anyway, your assigning it a value with the input.

Answer 2

i wouldn't think so for your pseudocode. since your pseudocode fills 'amount' with a new value initially. when you code it (however you plan on coding it) you just want to be aware you may need to initialize 'amount' to a value first.

Answer 3

It is always a good idea to initialize your variables.. say your user cancels the input.. what would be amount's value for the rest of the code??

If amount can be say 0-100, I would initialize amount to an illegal value such as -1 !

Why? So that if your user cancels the input, you will know straight away :) Also, check that amount value is in your expected range right after the input.. what if I input "a" in response to your query for amount? exception!