exercism/cpp/making-the-grade/HINTS.md

Hints

General

• while loops are used for indefinite (uncounted) iteration
• for loops are used for definite, (counted) iteration.
• The keywords break and continue help customize loop behavior.
• std::to_string() from string library can be used to convert a integer to string

Also being familiar with the following can help with completing the tasks:

• vectors: indexing, size, <vector>.emplace_back, <vector>.pop_back().
• string: using the + to concatenate strings, integer to string conversion, to_string.

1. Rounding Scores

• While loops will continue to execute until their test condition evaluates to False.
• <vector>.back() will return the last item in a vector.
• <vector>.pop_back() will remove the last item in a vector.

2. Non-Passing Students

• A results counter does need to be set up and incremented -- you'll want to return the count of non-passing students when the loop terminates.

3. The "Best"

• • Having an empty vector to add the "best" marks to is helpful here.
• <vector>.emplace_back() can help add things to the results vector.

4. Calculating Letter Grades

• These are lower thresholds. The lower threshold for a "D" is a score of 41, since an "F" is <= 40.
• static_cast<int> without parameters should round off increments nicely.
• You are expected to return an array, not a vector.

5. Matching Names to Scores

• If both containers are the same length and sorted the same way, could you use the index from one to retrieve a value from the other?
• std::to_string(int) can be used to convert a number to string.
• Don't forget the follow the format of the example's output.

6. A "Perfect" Score

• There may be or may not be a student with a score of 100, and you can't return an empty string without checking all scores.
• The control flow statements continue and break may be useful here to move past unwanted values.