Question

Write a method printCostTable() that prints out a table like the following:

price	carpet	fitting
5.0	150.0	120.0
9.0	270.0	120.0
13.0	390.0	120.0

The method should take four int arguments representing the width and length of the carpet, a start price and an end price.

The method should first print the headings

price	carpet	fitting

It should then print the price, carpet cost and fitting cost for each price starting from startPrice and increasing in increments of £4, up to but not exceeding endPrice. For example, assume you have initialised an instance of CarpetCostEstimator cce with labour charge £4.0. Then if startPrice is £5 and endPrice £15, and you execute.

cce.printCostTable(5, 6, 5, 15);

three rows of figures should be printed, as shown in the example above.

In order to align the columns of the table accurately, you should begin your method by defining a string that represents a tab character, like this

String tab = "\t";

I'm not sure on how to start with this java exercise so that the function would print a table.

Answer 1

Full working Java code:

import java.io.*;
class Demo {
//Static method to print the desired table
public static void printCostTable(int width, int length, int startPrice, int endPrice)
{
//Calculate the area
float area = width * length;
//Fitting cost is fixed
float fittingCost = 120.0f;
String tab = "\t";
//Print the header first
System.out.println("price"+tab+"carpet"+tab+"fitting");
//Run loop till the startPrice becomes just less than end price and increase startprice by 4
for(float i = startPrice; i < endPrice ; i+=4)
{
//Display the row according to given format
System.out.println(i+tab+(area*i)+tab+fittingCost);
}
}
   public static void main (String[] args) {
   //Call the static method with arguments.
       printCostTable(5, 6, 5, 15);
   }
}

Output:

price   carpet  fitting
5.0         150.0       120.0
9.0         270.0       120.0
13.0    390.0   120.0