Python function: Find Change from purchase amount

Question

I\'m looking for the most efficient way to figure out a change amount (Quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies) from a purchase amount. The purchase amount must be less than $1, a

Answer 1

This problem could be solved pretty easy with integer partitions from number theory. I wrote a recursive function that takes a number and a list of partitions and returns the number of possible combinations that would make up the given number.

http://sandboxrichard.blogspot.com/2009/03/integer-partitions-and-wiki-smarts.html

It's not exactly what you want, but it could be easily modified to get your result.