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Ruby Ruby Foundations Numbers Random Numbers and Formatting

alexandermuhr
alexandermuhr
3,466 Points
Posted by alexandermuhr
alexandermuhr
3,466 Points

Extra Credit for Number Formatting (Ruby)

So I am trying to do the extra credit from this section... any ideas what I am doing wrong? I do the exact same sequence in irb, and it seems to run correctly, but not when I run the program.

print "Enter a dollar amount: "
dollar_1 = gets
print "Enter another dollar amount: "
dollar_2 = gets
total = dollar_1.to_f * dollar_2.to_f
puts = "#{total}\n"

1 Answer

Shani Rivers
Shani Rivers
14,920 Points

Hi Alex!

The answer to your question is twofold, but I will give you a couple of hints and hopefully you will be able to make it work.

Hints:

Hint 1: Go to the Ruby documentation and on the the very top of the page it gives you sprintf function which will transform a float to a string with the ability to determine the floating point.

sprintf "%.1f", 1.234    #=> "1.2"

Hint 2: Figure out how to make the input for dollar1 and dollar2 a number (e.g. a floating number) instead of a string before you do the calculation on it, as it is not possible to do multiplication on a string in the way that you would assume otherwise.

I hope that helps!

alexandermuhr
alexandermuhr
3,466 Points
alexandermuhr
alexandermuhr
3,466 Points

I understand the print portion... but I am struggling with finding how to convert the string to a float. Why does it not work with the way I did it? If I convert using to_f before the "total" equation, it doesn't save as a float... so how do I use the bang(!) method to make sure my string stays a float?

Shani Rivers
Shani Rivers
14,920 Points

Try taking the input values in as a float first (e.g. dollar1 = gets.to_f) then do the multiplication on them. It doesn't work because you haven't specified what the input type should be.

Shani Rivers
Shani Rivers
14,920 Points

No problem! Thank you for asking!