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Java Java Basics Getting Started with Java IO

daniel zaragoza
daniel zaragoza
1,843 Points
Posted by daniel zaragoza
daniel zaragoza
1,843 Points

I keep getting "Did you forget to pass the `firstName` parameter to the printf function?" What am i doing wrong??

Any help would be useful.

IO.java 
// I have imported java.io.Console for you. It is a variable called console.
String firstName = "first name";
String lastName = "last name ";
console.readLine( firstName);
console.readLine( lastName);
console.printf("%s First name: \n",firstName);
Paul Hubbard
Paul Hubbard
5,818 Points

Hey! I just did the challenge, and I completed it. The problem is that you need to declare the console.readLine inside the variables for firstName and lastName. I've posted the full solution below. Hope this helps! :)

String firstName = console.readLine();

String lastName = console.readLine();

console.printf("%s First name: \n",firstName);

console.printf("%s Last name: \n",lastName);

babbiches
babbiches
306 Points
babbiches
babbiches
306 Points

This is what I did and it worked. Even though the challenge takes many different versions of this, I think this is the one that would be most right. Mostly because it allows the user to input their name which I think was the purpose of the challenge. 

String firstName = console.readLine("What is your first name?");
String lastName = console.readLine("What is your last name?");
console.printf("First Name: %s  \n", firstName);
console.printf("Last Name: %s  \n", lastName);

so it looks like you forgot the console.readLine, and alsoif you kept firstName = "first name" and you ran it it would come out as First name: first name. I hope this helps a little! Im new to this all together haha

1 Answer

Steve Hunter
Steve Hunter
57,712 Points

Hi Daniel,

I agree with both comments above. You've called the readLine() method, but not assigned the answer into the variable. The readLine method is asking for user input, like:

String myDogsName = console.readLine("What's your dog's name?: ");

The user answers the question and his input is stored in the variable, myDogsName. Where you've used the readLine() method, you passed in firstName as a parameter. You had previously set firstName to "first name", so the user would be presented with a request for "first name", which is cool. But his answer would be lost as your line doesn't assign his answer to anything:

console.readLine(firstName); // answer goes nowhere

You need to assign the output of the method:

String firstName = console.readLine("What's your name?: ");

One thing; make sure the output is neat. There's a couple of variants in the suggestions, one is:

console.printf("%s First name: \n",firstName);

This outputs the variable content first, then the static text so would look like this (if I ran the code):

Steve First Name:

That's not quite where we're at. The second suggestion is better:

console.printf("First Name: %s  \n", firstName);

As the output from that would be what we're looking for:

First Name: Steve

My solution, which is just one of many possible bits of working code looked like:

String firstName = console.readLine("What is your first name?: ");
String lastName = console.readLine("What is your last name?: ");
console.printf("First name: %s%n", firstName);
console.printf("Last name: %s%n", lastName);

The only real difference there is the use of %n rather than \n. They do the same thing, but %n is a platform specific way of adding a new line. It is preferred over \n but we're talking detail here; don't get hung up on stuff like that!

Hope that helped!

Steve.