Pset3 Runoff tabulation issues

Question

I am so close to a successful runoff program, but I've been having issues with the tabulation section. I decided that this was a good place to implement a recursive function, but it is a new concept to me so maybe I'm missing something. The rest of my code is perfectly functional. The only check50 error I am getting is this:

:( tabulate counts votes when multiple candidates are eliminated tabulate function did not produce correct vote totals

My code is as follows:

void tabulate(void)
{
    for (int voter = 0; voter < voter_count; voter++)
    {
        int rank = 0;
         elim_test(voter, rank);
    }
    return;
}

//recursive function for tabulating non-eliminated candidates
void elim_test(int voter, int rank)
{
    if (candidates[preferences[voter][rank]].eliminated == false)
    {
        candidates[preferences[voter][rank]].votes++;
        return;
    }
    elim_test(voter, rank++);
}

What am I missing here?

Answer 1

rank++

This means "tell me the value of rank, then add one to rank". So in the last line of elim_test, you're calling elim_test again with the exact same values over and over again.

To fix this, you can either use ++rank, which means "add one to rank, then tell me the value of rank", or you can write elim_test(voter, rank + 1);, since there's no reason to change the value of rank.

Answer 2

First of all your nesting of loops isn't correct, recursive functions can only be called inside a parent function.

Now if you want to make your function recursive then you should use int as a global variable outside the{ } inside your function

You don't need to use recursion as in my case I approached this problem without any typical syntaxes and recursion.

Anyways it depends upon you how you think and how you solve (not mine)