Roman Numerals

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The Problem 

Write a program to convert Arabic numbers less than 4000 to Roman numeral notation and display the result 

Background & Techniques

A good chance to review your Roman numeral knowledge.  A quick Web search will turn up lots of good links to refresh you.   

After playing with a few numbers I noticed that the digits 1 through 9 have  the same pattern whether they are in the unit's, ten's, hundred's or thousand's position ( thousands up to MMM).   The actual characters are different but the pattern is the same.

Units Tens Hundreds Thousands
I X C M
II XX CC MM
III XXX CCC MMM
IV XL CD MMMM
V L D MMMMM
VI LX DC MMMMMM
VII LXX DCC etc.
VIII LXXX DCCC  
IX XC CM  

If we make a table containing the seven characters I, V, X, L, C, D, M, notice that the units digit uses only the first 3 characters (I. V, X), the tens digit uses 3rd through 5th characters (X, L, C), and the hundreds  digit uses the 5th through 7th (C, D, M).   The program uses this consistent pattern.   Check the code to see how. 

Addendum October 8,2005:  Finally got around to adding number conversions from Roman back to Arabic at a user's request.  A bit more complicated because there are many ways to form invalid Roman numerals using  valid letters.  In fact a random collection of digits 1 through 9 will always form a valid Arabic number, but a random collection of letters I, V, X, L, C, D, M is quite unlikely to form a valid Roman number.    

The lack of a zero placeholder is another problem.  Our conversion code needs to identify that no numeral is defined for a particular position so we can insert the missing zero.      

Running/Exploring the Program

bulletBrowse source extract
bulletDownload source
bulletDownload  executable

Suggestions for further exploration

Try allowing Arabic numbers up to 9999. Notice that above 3999, the leading 'M's just keep increasing.   (There are some other conventions using lines over the M's or some  such,  but they didn't seem to adapt very well to machine display.) 

Implemented October, 2005:  Another obvious extension:  Modify the program to convert Roman numerals back to Arabic.  (I haven't  written this code yet - but I'll bet  it's possible.) 

 
Created: September 8, 2000

Modified: May 15, 2018

 
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