I read and reread about recursion. I've seen so many videos and Stack Overflow posts, but I just don't get it. I've been going round and round for three hours on this recursion solution (BTW, yes, I know it's a greedy/unsafe solution) Example: given coins [10, 5, 1] cents, find the minimum number of each coin to total 18 cents. A solution is supposed to return the coin collection [10, 5, 1, 1, 1]. I can't get it to move past the first coin, 10 in the collection. What am I missing and why? def r_change_money(total, denominations): def collect_coins(total, denominations): if total == 0: return False # fd (floor division) fd = total // denominations[0] addl_coins = [denominations[0]] * fd total -= fd * denominations[0] denominations.pop(0) return addl_coins # sort highest denom first denominations.sort(reverse=True) # holds coin collection coins = [] coins += collect_coins(total, denominations) return coins # [10, 5, 1, 1, 1] print(r_change_money(18, [1, 10, 5])) # [6, 1, 1] (although safe answer is [4, 4]) print(r_change_money(8, [6, 1, 4])) At least this solution isn't giving me errors anymore, but I am getting: [10] [6] Continue reading...
