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Ruby Ruby Operators and Control Structures Logical Operators The And (&&) Operator

Posted by Kyle Merrick
Kyle Merrick
3,617 Points

Getting syntax error and I'm not sure why. Any suggestions?

The method below checks the speed of a car and returns a string value: either "safe" or "unsafe".

Return "safe" if: The car_speed passed in as an argument is greater than or equal to the number 40. The car_speed passed in as an argument is less than or equal to the number 50.

Otherwise, return "unsafe". Hint: You should use the && logical operator to accomplish this task. :)

ruby.rb 
def check_speed(car_speed)
  if (car_speed > 40) || (car_speed += 40) && (car_speed < 50) || (car_speed += 50)
    return "safe"
  elsif 
    return "unsafe" 
end

1 Answer

Mike Wagner
Mike Wagner
23,559 Points
Mike Wagner
Mike Wagner
23,559 Points

The main issue you're having is in the way you've defined your if check. You're actually trying to add 40 to carspeed, which isn't going to work, since it's expecting only comparisons to exist here. For simplicity's sake, we can refine your if check to the following:

  if(car_speed >= 40) && (car_speed <= 50)

though, it could be written close to what you have as 

if(car_speed > 40 || car_speed == 40) && (car_speed < 50 || car_speed == 50)

which will check to make sure the car speed is both greater than or equal to 40 AND less than or equal to 50. This one simple change isn't enough to fix the code though. Your elsif is expecting another comparison. Since we're only expecting 2 returns, and there's no need to have a second comparison in there, if we change the elsif to else then we'll be almost there.

The last change you'll need, is an additional end keyword at the end of your if/else check. We already have one for the method itself, so if we add another one after the else return value, it will clear up the last syntax issue and we'll be good to go.