The Five Steps

Understand the problem

What is this program supposed to do?

The program is supposed to read the next roman number from the input. The main objective is to write the function get_roman(), but we will also need a driver to test it.

What kind of information is it given? (What is the input?)

The number is to be read from the standard input, and consists of roman digits:

M = 1000

D = 500

C = 100

L = 50

X = 10

V = 5

I = 1

What kind of results is it to produce? (What is the output?)

The function should return the integer representaion of the roman number. The driver should just print the result.

What formulas or techniques will be needed?

At first, the method seems straightforward; we just add up the values associated with each roman digit. However, roman numbers have an added twist - prefix digits. If a digit with a lower value preceeds a digit with a larger value, the lower value should be subtract rather than added.

Do a small example by hand

Write an algorithm for solving the problem

Translate the algorithm into a programming language (like C)

Test the program