ok cool, thanks alot for all your help, it is much appreciated :)

I drew up a picture of the circuit, its supposed to be calculated from right to left, and yes 0 implies its the starting resistor. The picture should be attached.

I added it to my original post but ill add it here as well:

An example of what a user would input would be
"Input resistance type(0 starting: 1 series: 2 parallel) and resistor value"
0 100
1...

yes they are both needed to calculate the resistance for when the user inputs 2 for parallel.

Ok well my assignment is to write a program to gives me the total resistance in a circuit.
The user is prompted for the resistance type and resistor value such as <1 200> 1 meaning in series, and...