Exercise 4: Easter

September 22, 2020

Goals of this exercise

After doing this assignment you are able to:
• create and use parameterized functions that may return a value of standard elementary
data type, viz. boolean, int, double, char, String;
• structure your program by means value-returning, parameterized functions.

Preparations
In this assignment you design and implement a program that computes the dates of a number
of Christian holy days that depend on the date of Easter. It is not allowed to use the java JRE date
manipulating classes like Calendar, Date etc!
• On Brightspace you find a project easter.zip that already contains the signatures of the
functions that you need to develop. Import this file with IntelliJ.

Part 4.1: Leap years

When calculating with dates, you need to take leap years into account. A year is a leap year if its
year number is dividable by 4, except if it is a multiple of 100 that is not dividable by 400. Hence,
1600 is a leap year, but 1700 is not a leap year. In a leap year February has 29 days instead of 28.
For completeness we summarize the months and their number of days:
Month #days Month #days Month #days
January 31 May 31 September 30
February 28 (29 in a leap year) June 30 October 31
March 31 July 31 November 30
April 30 August 31 December 31
Scenario:
• Experiment with the following years and answer with yes or no whether they are leap
years: 1900, 1999, 2000, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016.
• Design and implement the parameterized function isLeapYear that has the signature:

public static boolean isLeapYear(int year)

It returns true only if the argument year is a leap year, and it returns false otherwise.
• Design and implement the parameterized function numberOfDaysInMonth that has the
signature:

public static int numberOfDaysInMonth(int year, Month month)

Note that the data type Month is already defined as an enumeration type in your project.

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Part 4.2: Holy days based on Easter
The dates of several Christian holy days depend on Easter in the following way:

• Carnival (carnaval): 7 weeks before Easter, ending on Tuesday.

• Good Friday (Goede Vrijdag): Friday before Easter.
• Ascension Day (Hemelvaart): 10 days before Whitsuntide.

• Whitsuntide (Pinksteren): 7 weeks after Easter.

Easter is on the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after the beginning of spring (March
21). The Meeus/Jones/Butcher formula computes the Easter date (month, day) for a year (Y):
a = Y mod 19
b = Y / 100
c = Y mod 100
d = b / 4
e = b mod 4
f = (b + 8) / 25
g = (b - f + 1) / 3
h = (19 * a + b - d - g + 15) mod 30
i = c / 4
k = c mod 4
L = (32 + 2 * e + 2 * i - h - k) mod 7
m = (a + 11 * h + 22 * L) / 451
month = ( h + L - 7 * m + 114) / 31
day = ((h + L - 7 * m + 114) mod 31) + 1
This computation is based on the so-called Metonic cycle which consists of 19 years. It is impor-
tant to observe that all computations are integer operations. Design and implement a function
showHolyDays that allows a user to enter a year Y and which prints the dates (month, day) of
all of the above mentioned holy days (including Easter) for that year Y.
Scenario:
• Design and implement the functions easterMonth and easterDay that compute the day
and month respectively of Easter given a year as int-parameter. Hence, the signatures are:

static Month easterMonth(int year)

static int easterDay(int year)

• Design and implement the function dayNumberInYear that computes what the day num-
ber is of a given date (day/month/year) in that year. The signature is:

static int dayNumberInYear(int day, Month month, int year)

For instance, the number of the first of January is always 1, and the number of the first of
March in a leap year is 61, and it is 60 in non-leap years.
• Design and implement the functions monthInYearOfDayNumber and
dayInMonthOfDayNumber that compute for a given day number in a given year the cor-
responding month, and day in month. The signatures are:

static Month monthInYearOfDayNumber(int dayNumber, int year)

static int dayInMonthOfDayNumber(int dayNumber, int year)

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 For instance, the month of day number 60 in a leap year is February, whereas the month of
day number 60 in a non-leap year is March. Consequently, the day in month of day number
60 in a leap year is 29 (February), and it is 1 (March) in a non-leap year.
• Design and implement the function showHolyDays, using the above created functions.
The signature of this function is:

static void showHolyDays(int year)

Part 4.3: Display a year calendar

Design and implement the function showYear, that is parameterized with a year, that shows the
complete year in a way that is customary in calendars. Weeks start on Sunday. For example, the
expected output of 2020 should be:
2020
January February March
Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
1 2 3 4 1 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
5 6 7 8 9 10 11 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 8 9 10 11 12 13 14
12 13 14 15 16 17 18 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 15 16 17 18 19 20 21
19 20 21 22 23 24 25 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 22 23 24 25 26 27 28
26 27 28 29 30 31 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 29 30 31

April May June

Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
1 2 3 4 1 2 1 2 3 4 5 6
5 6 7 8 9 10 11 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
12 13 14 15 16 17 18 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
19 20 21 22 23 24 25 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 21 22 23 24 25 26 27
26 27 28 29 30 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 28 29 30
31

July August September

Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
1 2 3 4 1 1 2 3 4 5
5 6 7 8 9 10 11 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
12 13 14 15 16 17 18 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 13 14 15 16 17 18 19
19 20 21 22 23 24 25 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 20 21 22 23 24 25 26
26 27 28 29 30 31 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 27 28 29 30
30 31

October November December

Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
1 2 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 2 3 4 5
4 5 6 7 8 9 10 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
11 12 13 14 15 16 17 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 13 14 15 16 17 18 19
18 19 20 21 22 23 24 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 20 21 22 23 24 25 26
25 26 27 28 29 30 31 29 30 27 28 29 30 31