Dos Batch Calculator Help

[Chunter]

Hi there, I'm a college student and am relatively new to Dos. Recently an instructor asked me to compile a Dos batchfile. This is my assignment:

A DOS batch file named CalcComm is to be coded to calculate the commission for each
sales person based on their daily sales for the week. The batch file accepts a minimum of
2 command line parameters and a maximum of 5 command line parameters. At the end
of the batch file, the total sales, commission rate and commission dollars earned should
be displayed.

So basically my parameters are days of the week so there's a minimum of 2 days and a maximum of 5 because there's only 5 days in a week.

I could probably get this up and running easily, however, my instructor also specified that you can only do the calculations once. That's the one problem that I just can't get around. See a normal calculation would work like so:

set /a total = %1 + %2 + %3 + %4 + %5

However this is a little more complex because I can either have (I know this isn't the exact calculation needed to get commission, I'm just giving you a general idea)
%1 + %2 + %3 + %4 + %5
Or
%1 + %2 + %3 + %4
Or
%1 + %2 + %3
Or
%1 + %2

This is where I run into the problem say I only wanted to calculate sales for Thursday and Friday, 2 parameters of the possible 5 (so %1 + %2) that's going to leave 3 parameters unaccounted for and results in a missing operand.

I've been getting head aches just trying to contemplate how exactly to get around this problem. Basically what I'm asking is: How do I structure my batchfile to calculate more than one possible combination of parameters.

I'm having a very similar problem with my java class, although I don't think Java's your area of expertise but it uses a very similar logic.

Any help would be much appreciated.

[avery_larry]

Is it "legal" to use a bunch of if statements to determine what parameters exist and then add them . . ? Kinda like this:

Code: Select all

if not "%5"=="" (
   set /a total=%5+%4+%3+%2+%1
   set numdays=5
   ) else (
      if not "%4"=="" (
         set /a total=%4+%3+%2+%1
         set numdays=4
         ) else (
            if not "%3"=="" (
               set /a total=%3+%2+%1
               set numdays=3
               ) else (
                  set /a total=%2+%1
                  set numdays=2
            )
      )
)

You could also append a zero and divide by 10 -- I probably like this one best -- but I think it will fail if a 0 is passed as an argument.

set /a total=(%50+%40+%30+%20+%10)/10

looks like it'll probably work with a 0 passed to it.

[Chunter]

Well that wasn't quite the answer I was looking for but it certainly helped out a lot, I think I figured out how to do it now.