Total Honey - codepath/compsci_guides GitHub Wiki

TIP102 Unit 1 Session 1 Standard (Click for link to problem statements)

Problem Highlights

• 💡 Difficulty: Easy
• ⏰ Time to complete: 5 mins
• 🛠️ Topics: List Iterations, Loops

U-nderstand

Understand what the interviewer is asking for by using test cases and questions about the problem.

• Q: What should the function sum_honey() do?

  • A: The function should take a list of integers hunny_jars and return the sum of all elements in the list.

• Q: Can the built-in sum() function be used?

  • A: No, the problem explicitly states that the sum() function should not be used.

• Q: What happens if the list is empty?

  • A: The function should return 0 since there are no elements to add.

• The function sum_honey() should take a list of integers, hunny_jars, and return the sum of all the elements in the list without using the built-in sum() function.

HAPPY CASE
Input: [2, 3, 4, 5]
Expected Output: 14

Input: [10, 20, 30]
Expected Output: 60

EDGE CASE
Input: []
Expected Output: 0

P-lan

Plan the solution with appropriate visualizations and pseudocode.

General Idea: Define a function that initializes a sum variable to 0, iterates through the list, adds each element to the sum variable, and returns the sum.

1. Define the function `sum_honey(hunny_jars)`.
2. Initialize a variable `total_honey` to 0.
3. Iterate through each element in `hunny_jars`.
4. Add each element to `total_honey`.
5. Return `total_honey`

⚠️ Common Mistakes

• Forgetting to initialize the sum variable.
• Not correctly iterating through the list.

I-mplement

Implement the code to solve the algorithm.

def sum_honey(hunny_jars):
    # Initialize the sum variable to 0
    total_honey = 0
    
    # Iterate through each element in the list
    for jar in hunny_jars:
        # Add the element to the total sum
        total_honey += jar
    
    # Return the total sum
    return total_honey