Shell Programming and Scripting

Hi, this is logic question, not sure anyone can answer

I have 5 balls, and balance in front of me, this 5 balls look the same, but one of them is heavier, I need to use balance to find the heavier ball

my approach is take any 2 balls, 2 balls in each side of balance, if the weight the same, then fifth ball is the answer, if one of the two balls group is heavier, then take each ball from that 2 balls group to each side of balance, the heavier one is the answer .

can we write it programatically with unix or perl?

Thanks

Chris

Isn't that just comparing? I mean, instead of the balance thing you could do something like:
make array (weigh each ball); testweight is value of balls[0]; unset balls[0]
for item in (sequence of [amount of array items minus 1]); do
if [weight of item] equals testweight then continue
elif [weight of item] greater than testweight then echo item
elif [weight of item] less than testweight then echo testweight
done?

Hi, this is chris

Thank you foir your response about logic question
can you write a program?
you sem use good approach
thanks

Chris