I had to write a program that asks the user to guess a number. The program then tells if their guess is too high or too low depending on the difference between their guess and the random number. I finished the program and it works, but my teacher's very picky about efficiency. The chapter is about controlled structures. Can someone look at this and tell me if there's a better way to write it? Mine's kinda long and doesn't seem right :\

#include <iostream>
#include <cstdlib>
#include <ctime>

using namespace std;

int main()
{
		//declare the variables
	int num;		//Variable to store the random number
	int guess;		//Variable to store the number guessed by the user
	int isGuessed;	//Boolean variable to control the loop
	int diff;		//Variable to store the difference between the random number and guessed number
	int count;		//Variable to count number of tries

	num = (rand() + time(0)) % 100;
	isGuessed = false;
	count = 0;


	while (!isGuessed)
	{
		while (count < 5)
		{
		cout << "Enter an integer greater than or equal to 0 and less than 100.  You have 5 guesses: ";
		cin >> guess;
		cout << endl;

		diff = abs(num - guess);	//Diff equals the difference between num and guess

		if (diff == 0)
		{
			cout << "You guessed the correct number." << endl;
			isGuessed = true;
			count = 5;
		}
		else if (diff >= 50)
		{
			if (guess > num)
				cout << "Your guess is very high!" << endl;
			else
				cout << "Your guess is very low!" << endl;
		}
		else if (diff >= 30)
		{
			if (guess > num)
				cout << "Your guess is high!" << endl;
			else
				cout << "Your guess is low!" << endl;
		}
		else if (diff >= 15)
		{
			if (guess > num)
				cout << "Your guess is moderately high!" << endl;
			else
				cout << "Your guess is moderately low!" << endl;
		}
		else
		{
			if (guess > num)
				cout << "Your guess is somewhat high!" << endl;
			else
				cout << "Your guess is somewhat low!" << endl;
		}
		count++;
		}	//end while
		cout << "\nGame over!" << endl;
		if (isGuessed)
			cout << "You win!" << endl;
		else
			cout << "You lose!" << endl;
		isGuessed = true;
	}	//end while

	return 0;
}

Thanks for the help! =)

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All 4 Replies

Just browsing through your code. First thing, you don't need a nested while loop. Take out the outer while-loop, set the flag to true & break out of the loop when the answer is correct.

Also, I would use bool type for flag variables such as isGuessed.

I think you can get rid of the outer while loop:

while (!isGuessed)
	{
               // code
		isGuessed = true;
	}	//end while

Since you assign isGuessed to true at the end, you're only going to go through the loop once, right? So it's not really a loop. Also, and it's not really an efficiency issue, but it might be helpful to, instead of saying they have 5 guesses each time, tell them how many guesses they have remaining. That's a small issue though.

Thanks, those tips helped a lot :)

>I finished the program and it works, but my teacher's very picky about efficiency.
Your program is I/O bound. The time it takes for a user to type a number and the time it takes to print the output will vastly overwhelm any processing efficiency. I recommend that you focus on clarity and correctness rather than efficiency.

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