Question

Design and implement a class called Clock. A Clock object holds one instance of a time such as 9:48 P.M. Have at least these public methods:

- A no-arguments constructor that initializes the time to midnight (see page 43 for the discussion of a no-arguments constructor)
- A method to explicitly assign a given time (you will have to give some thought to appropriate arguments for this method)
- Methods to retrieve information: the current hour, the current minute, and a boolean method that returns true if the time is at or before noon
- A method to advance the time forward by a given number of minutes (which could be negative to move the clock backward or positive to move the clock forward)

Answer 1

The Clock class includes a constructor to set the time to midnight, methods to set time, get current hours and minutes, check if the time is before noon, and a method to advance the time by minutes, considering 24-hour time format.

Step-by-step explanation:

To design a Clock class as per the requirements, we will need to implement various methods. The first method is the no-arguments constructor that sets the time to midnight. The next method is for explicitly assigning a given time; appropriate arguments for this method would likely include hours, minutes, and an AM/PM indicator. Additionally, we will create methods to retrieve the current hour and minute, and a boolean method to check if the time is at or before noon. Finally, a method to advance the time forward by a given number of minutes will be implemented, which should handle both positive and negative values to move time forward or backward.

The advancement in the time, considering 24-hour clocks, will follow the elapsed time applications necessary to maintain an accurate reflection of the passage of time. As with applications involving a 24-hour clock, when advancing time, if the hours surpass 24, they should revert to 0 or continue from 0, depending on whether time is being moved forward or backward.

One key point to remember is to handle the conversion between 12-hour and 24-hour time formats if we aim to provide flexibility for display purposes. This entails converting PM hours to the 24-hour format by adding 12 to the PM hours (except for 12 PM which is 12 in the 24-hour format) and leaving AM hours as is, except for 12 AM which is 0 in the 24-hour format.