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Michel van Essen
8,077 PointsI'm unsure if I'm jumping the gun but what if you need input that could be both integers or floating numbers?
How about things like weight? or length? and what if the answer to a couple of prompts is an integer while the question asked for floating numbers? For example 3.8 + 1.2?
3 Answers
Robert Richey
Courses Plus Student 16,352 PointsHi Michel,
It's up to you, as the program author, to decide how you want to interpret the input - which comes in as a string. Parsing a float to an integer will remove all values beyond the decimal (i.e. truncate). Parsing an integer to a float will have no apparent effect. JavaScript doesn't care if you're adding floats to ints.
Geoff Parsons
11,679 PointsIf you think there's a chance you might need floats you should use parseFloat, it will function just the same.
Michel van Essen
8,077 PointsGot it, so I'll basically use parseFloat more than parseInt which lead me to the following question, why even bother using parseInt?
By the way Geoff, that's one nice epic beard you got there!
Gina Bégin
Courses Plus Student 8,613 PointsMichel van Essen, did you ever figure out the reason for using parseInt? I noticed it wasn't answered, but I'd like to know as well. Geoff Parsons or Robert Richey — any insight?
Clara Roldan
3,074 PointsYou might not want a number with decimals returned. For example, imagine asking a user "Hoy many pixels should the box have?". The user might not know pixels can't have decimals and type 10.5px, so you parseInt() the value and discard the decimal. Silly example, of course you could also check the input and throw an error if it's not an integer...