Efficiently Calculating Total Cost

Efficiently Calculating Total Cost: A JavaScript Function

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Imagine you are building an e-commerce application that needs to calculate the total cost of items in a shopping cart. The prices and quantities of the items are stored in two separate arrays. You need to write a function that takes these two arrays as input and returns the total cost.

The Solution

The calculateTotalCost function is a simple and efficient solution to this problem. Here is the code:

JavaScriptfunction calculateTotalCost(prices, quantities) {
    // Initialize total cost to 0
    let totalCost = 0;
    
    // Loop through prices and quantities arrays
    for (let i = 0; i < prices.length; i++) {
        // For each item, multiply the price by the quantity and add to total cost
        totalCost += prices[i] * quantities[i];
    }
    
    // Return the total cost
    return totalCost;
}

How it Works

The function works by iterating through the prices and quantities arrays simultaneously, using a for loop. For each item, it multiplies the price by the quantity and adds the result to the totalCost variable. Finally, it returns the totalCost.

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Example Usage

To demonstrate the usage of the calculateTotalCost function, let’s consider an example. Suppose we have the following prices and quantities:

JavaScriptconst prices = [10, 20, 30];
const quantities = [2, 3, 1];

We can call the calculateTotalCost function with these arrays as arguments:

JavaScriptconsole.log(calculateTotalCost(prices, quantities));  // Output: 110

The output will be 110, which is the total cost of the items.

Advantages

The calculateTotalCost function has several advantages:

  • It is simple and easy to understand.
  • It is efficient, with a time complexity of O(n), where n is the length of the input arrays.
  • It is reusable and can be used in various contexts where you need to calculate the total cost of items.

Conclusion

The calculateTotalCost function is a simple yet effective solution for calculating the total cost of items based on their prices and quantities. Its simplicity, efficiency, and reusability make it a valuable tool for any developer working on an e-commerce application or any other project that requires similar calculations.

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