C Exercises: Find angle between given hour and minute hands

Last update on August 07 2025 12:49:11 (UTC/GMT +8 hours)

28. Angle Between Clock Hands Variants

Write a C program to find the angle between the hour and minute hands.

Example:
Input: int ha = 11
int ma = 30
Output: Angle between hour and minute hands 165

Sample Solution:

C Code:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <math.h>

// Function to calculate the angle between the hour and minute hands of a clock
int calcAngle(int ha, int ma) {
    // Adjusting hour and minute values to avoid errors for ha = 12 and ma = 60
    if (ha == 12) 
        ha = 0; 
    if (ma == 60)  
        ma = 0; 

    // Calculate hour and minute angles based on clock readings
    int hour_angle = (int)(0.5 * (ha * 60 + ma)); // Hour hand angle
    int minute_angle = (int)(6 * ma); // Minute hand angle

    // Calculate the absolute difference between hour and minute angles
    int angle = abs(hour_angle - minute_angle);

    // Calculate the smaller angle between the two possible angles
    int complementary_angle = 360 - angle; // Calculate complementary angle
    return (complementary_angle > angle) ? angle : complementary_angle;
}

int main(void) {
    int ha = 11; // Hour hand position
    printf("\nAngles move by hour hand: %d", ha);
    int ma = 30; // Minute hand position
    printf("\nAngles move by minute hand: %d", ma);

    // Check for invalid inputs and display an error message if detected
    if (ha < 0 || ma < 0 || ha > 12 || ma > 60) {
        printf("\nWrong input..!"); 
    } else {
        // Calculate and display the angle between hour and minute hands
        printf("\nAngle between hour and minute hands: %d", calcAngle(ha, ma)); 	
    }

    return 0;
}

Sample Output:

Angles move by hour hand: 11
Angles move by minute hand: 30
Angle between hour and minute hands 165

Flowchart:

$Flowchart: Find angle between given hour and minute hands$

For more Practice: Solve these Related Problems:

Write a C program to compute the angle between the hour and minute hands for any given time using arithmetic.
Write a C program to calculate the smallest angle between clock hands and handle edge cases at 12 o'clock.
Write a C program to find the angle between clock hands and display both the smaller and larger angles.
Write a C program to compute the angle for multiple times given in an array and output the results.

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