C# console application

Question

write a program to evaluate the minimum number of steps to measure X liters of water with Y buckets each having a separate denomination.

Vulpes · Answer

If one of the buckets has a denomination of 'X' then clearly you can do it one step. Otherwise you have to consider all the possible sums of 2 buckets with denominations less than 'X' to see if there is a sum which equals X. If so then you can do it in two steps. If there isn't such a sum then you have to consider the possible sums of 3 buckets and so on until (hopefully) you find a combination which equals 'X'. However it's quite possible that there won't be a combination which adds up to 'X'. If that's the case then the question doesn't make it clear what you're supposed to do. In some cases you'd be able to make up the shortfall by using part of one of the other buckets; in other cases you wouldn't be able to do this and so would have to refill one or more of the buckets.