Recitation Exercise 05 Solution

Background information about Critical Path Analysis from a textbook: A critical path analysis is a technique used to determine the time schedule for a project. This information is important in the planning stages before a project is begun, and it is also useful to evaluate the progress of a project that is partially completed. One method for this analysis starts by dividing a project into sequential events and then dividing each event into various tasks. Although one event must be completed before the next one is started, various tasks within an event can occur simultaneously. The time it takes to complete an event, therefore, depends on the number of days required to finish its longest task. Similarly, the total time it takes to finish a project is the sum of time it takes to finish each event.

 

Assume that the critical path information for a major construction project has been stored in a data file. Each line of the data file contains an event number, a task number, and the number of days required to complete the task. The data have been stored such that all the task data for the first event are followed by all the task data for the second event, and so on. A typical set of data is shown in the following table.

 

Event
Task
Number of Days
1
15
3
1
27
6
1
36
4
2
15
5
3
18
4
3
26
1
4
15
2
4
26
7
4
27
7
5
16
4
 

You can simply download rec05-ch03-ex02-data1.txt from the web page and save it as data1.txt OR simply open a text file data1.txt and copy/paste just the above numbers into that file.

 

Programming problem:

 

Write a program that gets two file names as command line arguments after -input and -output options, for example

main212 rec05 –input data1.txt –output output1.txt

or

 

main212 rec05 –output output1.txt –input data1.txt

If user enters less arguments or invalid options, your program should print the above usage information and quit.

 

Then your program reads the critical path information from data1.txt file and prints a project completion timetable into output1.txt. Timetable lists each event number, number of tasks under this event, the maximum number of days for this event, and the total number of days for the project completion.

 

For example, your output1.txt will look like as follows based on the above input file:

 

Project completion timetable

------------------------------------------------

Event
Num of tasks
Max num.of days
------
-------
--------
1
3
6
2
1
5
3
2
4
4
3
7
5
1
4
------------------------------------------------

Total number of days to finish the project: 26 days

 

Note that we might give different input file so your program should be general enough to produce correct result for any input file!



 

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