How can I fix my c code for my school project-CodePudding

I'm doing some Chinese zodiac assignment for my programming course in C, and I'm not sure if there's a way I can write this doe in much less lines:

int main() {

int year;

printf("Enter your year of birth: \n");
scanf_s("%i", &year);

if (year % 12 == 0) {
    return 0;
} else if (year % 12 == 1) {
    return 1;
} else if (year % 12 == 2) {
    return 2;
} else if (year % 12 == 3) {
    return 3;
} else if (year % 12 == 4) {
    return 4;
} else if (year % 12 == 5) {
    return 5;
} else if (year % 12 == 6) {
    return 6;
} else if (year % 12 == 7) {
    return 7;
} else if (year % 12 == 8) {
    return 8;
} else if (year % 12 == 9) {
    return 9;
} else if (year % 12 == 10) {
        return 10;               
} else if (year % 12 == 11) {
    return 11;
}

I want to know if there's any way to optimize this code.

CodePudding user response：

You could shorten the function like in the following code snippet.

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

int zodiac(void)
{
    int year;

    printf("Enter your year of birth: \n");
    scanf("%d", &year);

    if ((year % 12) == 0)
    {
        return 12;
    }
    else
    {
        return (year % 12);
    }
}

int main()
{

    printf("Your zodiac year is: %d\n", zodiac());
    return 0;
}

Testing that out gives the following terminal output.

@Dev:~/C_Programs/Console/Zodiac/bin/Release$ ./Zodiac 
Enter your year of birth: 
1955
Your zodiac year is: 11

Give that a try and see if it meets the spirit of your project.

CodePudding user response：

year % 12 reduces the year to the range [-11 ... 11]. Use that as a starting point to get the numbers [0...11].

int chinese_zodiac = year % 12;
if (chinese_zodiac < 0) {
  chinese_zodiac  = 12;
}
printf("Chinese zodiac index %d\n", chinese_zodiac);
printf("Chinese zodiac number %d\n", chinese_zodiac   1);
static const char *animal[12] = { "Rat", "Ox", "Tiger", /* rest for OP to add */ };
printf("Chinese zodiac animal %s\n", animal[chinese_zodiac]);

Ref: Chinese zodiac

Note: Feb 01 2022 – Jan 21 2023 is the year of the tiger (year number 3). OP's year may need an offset.