Ruby Language Recursion in Ruby Recursive function

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Example

Let's start with a simple algorithm to see how recursion could be implemented in Ruby.

A bakery has products to sell. Products are in packs. It services orders in packs only. Packaging starts from the largest pack size and then the remaining quantities are filled by next pack sizes available.

For e.g. If an order of 16 is received, bakery allocates 2 from 5 pack and 2 from 3 pack. 25+23 = 16. Let's see how this is implemented in recursion. "allocate" is the recursive function here.

#!/usr/bin/ruby

class Bakery
  attr_accessor :selected_packs

  def initialize
    @packs = [5,3] # pack sizes 5 and 3
    @selected_packs = []
  end

  def allocate(qty)
    remaining_qty = nil

    # ==============================================
    # packs are allocated in large packs first order
    # to minimize the packaging space
    # ==============================================
    @packs.each do |pack|
      remaining_qty = qty - pack

      if remaining_qty > 0
        ret_val = allocate(remaining_qty)
        if ret_val == 0
          @selected_packs << pack
          remaining_qty = 0
          break
        end
      elsif remaining_qty == 0
        @selected_packs << pack
        break
      end
    end

    remaining_qty
  end
end

bakery = Bakery.new
bakery.allocate(16)
puts "Pack combination is: #{bakery.selected_packs.inspect}"

Output is:

Pack combination is: [3, 3, 5, 5]



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