CPSC 231: Assignment 5 (Worth 4%)

New Concepts to be applied for the assignment

1. Problem decomposition through the use of program modules (functions and procedures)

2. One dimensional arrays

Writing a simple banking program

You are to write a program that tracks the bank accounts for a single bank client.  The full version of this program will track information for a maximum of 4 separate accounts: savings, chequing, mutual fund (in case you aren't sure what a mutual fund is here is a link that provides some common definitions although having a precise definition isn't mandatory to complete this assignment) and credit card.  Also your program will iimplement the common set of banking functions: deposits, withdraws, transfers between accounts and the display of account information. You should start by declaring a one-dimensional array of real values which will be used to track the banking information for a client.  Each array element will be used to store the balance for one of the four types of accounts.  You will have to pass this array as a parameter to the various procedures and functions in your program.

Grading: Working submissions

Assignments that receive a 'C+'

After declaring the array, each element will be initialized to some default starting value (a negative number).  You can assume that accounts can only hold positive values so a negative value indicates that a particular type of account has not yet been opened.    The program will then display a series of available options to the user in the form of a menu:

Note: Not all of these functions will be implemented for the 'C+' grade version of the assignment.  As you implement the additional features (described in the section below) you will have the potential to receive a higher grade.  You only need to implement menu options  #2, 5 and 6 for the C+ grade version.  You have the choice of either not showing options that have not yet been implemented or have these options display some sort of "under construction" or "feature not yet implemented" message when they've been selected.

Option #2: Show your balance

For each bank account that the client has opened, the program will display the current balance for each account as well as the total balance for all accounts.   The total balance will be equal to the sum of the savings, chequing and mutual fund accounts (these three accounts are assets: things that you own) minus the balance for the credit card account (which is a liability: something that you owe someone else).   Make sure that you only include in this calculation accounts that have actually been opened.   For example, if the person only opened a savings and chequing account then the total balance would simply be the sum of these two values (don't add the negative flag value for accounts that have not yet been opened).  Although you do not have to make your output identical to the one in the sample program it should be neat and presentable in order for you to get credit for your work.

Option #5: Open a new account. 

After the user has selecting this option, the program will check if the person has already opened the maximum number of accounts.  If the person has already opened four accounts then your program should provide a suitable error message to the user (e.g., "You have already opened the maximum number of accounts.  For further information please contact one of our banking representatives at (403)123-4567").  If the person has opened fewer than four accounts, the program will then prompt the user to indicate which (unopened) account that he or she wishes to open.  Opening account an will change the balance from a negative value to zero. The program should not allow the person to re-open an account that has already opened (especially for the credit card account because setting it to zero will obviously wipe out any previous balance).  The next time that the user selects menu option #2, the newly crated account will have it's balance displayed and the balance for the account will be used to calculate the total overall balance.

Option #6: Quit the program.

Until this option is selected by the user the program will continually loop and redisplay the main menu.  When the user does select the 'quit' option the loop stops and the program ends.

Implementing additional capabilities

Implementing each of the features listed below results in the increase of one letter 'step' (e.g., 'C+' to 'B-').    You can implement the features in any order and in any combination that you wish although it is likely that you will implement features #1 & 2 prior to implementing feature number 3 and features 4 & 5 prior to implementing feature number 6 and the features related to the asset accounts will be likely be implemented before versions for the credit card are finished.   Implementing all six features will yield a grade increase of six steps ('C+' to 'A+').

1. Deposit money into the asset accounts. Implement a procedure that will allow the user to deposit money into one of the three asset accounts (savings, chequing or mutual fund).  The procedure will prompt the user to the enter the value to deposit and perform rudimentary error checking to ensure that a negative value will not be deposited into the bank account.  Entering a negative value is a signal from the user that he or she wants to cancel the deposit and the program will then re-display the main menu.  Entering a positive value will increase the appropriate account by the amount that was entered by the user and a brief confirmation message will be displayed (e.g., 'Your money has been deposited into your mutual fund account') and the program will return to the main menu.

2. Withdraw money from the asset accounts.  Implement a procedure that will allow the user to take money out of one of the three asset accounts.  The procedure will prompt the user to the enter in the value to withdraw.  In a fashion similar to making deposits, entering a negative value will signal a cancelling of the current transaction and return the user to the main menu.  However your program must also ensure that the person does withdraw an amount out of an account that is larger than the current balance (i.e., the client is not allowed to overdraw any of his or her accounts!).   Your program should show an appropriate error message if a potential withdraw would result in a negative value (e.g., "You cannot withdraw $25.00 from your savings account because you only have a current balance of $20.00") and it will return back to the main menu.  Entering a negative value is a signal from the user that he or she wants to cancel the deposit and the program will then display the main menu.   Once an acceptable amount has been entered the program will decrease the appropriate account by this amount and display a brief confirmation message and return to the main menu.

3. Transferring money between the asset accounts.  This feature will only work if the client has opened two or more asset accounts.  If this is not the case then the program should politely inform the user that they need more than one account with the bank in order to conduct an inter-account transfer.  If the person has opened up more than one asset account then the program will prompt the person to indicate from which account does he or she wish to withdraw money out of.  Again the same error checks described in feature  #2 must be conducted.  Next your program will prompt the user to indicate the account that he or she wishes to transfer the money into which cannot be same account as the source account.  (Again the program will simply return to the main menu if the source and destination account are identical and it will return back to the main menu).  Once a valid set of values has been entered from the amount and the source and destination accounts your program should display a brief confirmation message and return to the main menu.

4. Depositing money into the credit card account.   This feature works in a fashion that is similar to feature number 1.  Because the amount shown is the amount owed then depositing money into this account will reduce the amount owed (and the reduced value will be shown the next time that the credit card balance is displayed).

5. Withdrawing money from the credit card account.   This feature works in a fashion that is similar to feature number 2 except that withdrawals from the account will increase the amount owed.

6. Transferring money to/from the credit card account.  This feature works in a fashion that is similar to feature number 3 except that you need to keep in mind that the asset accounts show the amount that you own while the credit card account shows the amount that you owe someone else.  Consequently the effect of transfers has an opposite effect on the credit card account than it would have on the asset accounts:

	Transfer from	Transfer to
Asset account	Decrease the balance	Increase the balance
Credit card account	Increase the balance	Decrease the balance

 

Program modules (procedures and function that must be implemented in the full version of the program):

1. Procedure "initialize": Used to initially set the array elements to some starting negative values.
2. Procedure "openAccount": Allows the user to create new accounts by setting the starting balance to zero.
3. Procedure "displayBalance": Shows the current balance for each the account that has been opened by the user (non-negative balance) as well as an overall balance for all accounts.
4. Procedure "makeDeposit":  Allows the user to put money into an opened account.
5. Procedure "makeWithdrawal ": Allows the user to take money out of an opened account.
6. Procedure "makeTransfer": Moves money between two different accounts.
7. Function "hasNoAccounts": Because the program will to repeatedly check if the user has any accounts opened with the bank before it proceeds with most of the transactions, the code should not be simply rewritten each time it is required but instead it should be implemented as a function that takes a list of the user's bank accounts as a parameter (i.e., the array) and returns a true value if the person has no accounts open with the bank and a false value if the person has at least one account.

How you wish to structure the remainder of your program is up to you, just make sure that your solution is guided by good design principles e.g., avoid putting all the code into a single function or procedure (especially the main procedure), each function or procedure should have a well defined task that gives it a clear purpose.  Some of the other functions or procedures that you wish to implement include:

1. Procedure displayMenu: Shows the a list of the main operations of the program.
2. Function hasMaxAccounts: Returns a true value if the person already has the maximum number of accounts open, false otherwise.
3. Function countAccounts: Returns an integer that is equal to the number of accounts that the user has opened with the bank.

Grading: Non-working submissions

'D' grade submissions:

The student has invested considerable time and effort into the assignment, the program does not fulfill any of the above requirements but it does compile.

'D-' grade submissions:

The student has invested considerable time and effort into the assignment, the program does not fulfill any of the above requirements and it does not compile.

Other submission requirements

1. Good coding style and documentation:  They will play a role in determining your final grade for this assignment.  Your grade can be reduced by a letter step or more if your submission was implemented using bad style conventions (e.g., 'A' to 'A-' for employing poor naming conventions for identifiers, insufficient documentation, the use of global variables or non-modular design).

2. Include a README file in your submission:  For this assignment your README file must indicate what grade level has been completed (e.g., A, B or C) as well as which of the above features have been implemented.  Because this assignment and all the others that follow it will allow you to choose from a list of features that you wish to implement, it is crucial that you specify exactly what features that you have actually finished.   Your TA is not responsible for wading through every line of your source code in order to take note of features that you have implemented but not listed in your README file.  Fulfilling this requirement will allow your marker to quickly determine what he or she must look for and speed up the marking process.

3. Assignments (source code/dot-p file and the README file) must be electronically submitted via submit.  In addition a paper print out of all the source code and the README must be handed into the assignment drop box for the lab that you are registered in (located on the second floor of the Math Sciences building).  Electronically submitting the assignment allows your marker to run the code in order to quickly determine what features were implemented.  Providing a paper printout makes it easier for your marker to read and scan through your source code.

Sample Executable

You can run a sample executable called "banking" which can be found in Unix in the directory: /home/231/assignments/assignment5