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Ruby Ruby Loops Build a Simple Contact List Part 3: Printing The Contact List

Jeanette Trudell
Jeanette Trudell
11,460 Points
Posted by Jeanette Trudell
Jeanette Trudell
11,460 Points

Point of answer = answer.to_i if kind == "number" in this program?

Why is this line of code included in this program? It is never used. If you passed "number" to the add method (add("What is the phone number?", "number")) I would understand why it was included. As the program is written, though, the phone numbers entered are simply strings that get printed out to the screen.

candacemielke
candacemielke
6,466 Points

For this kind of basic program, yes, it would be pointless to include that bit of code. However, this is a lesson on using these types of snippets in different situations. Including that was for the sake of the learning, I'm sure.

1 Answer

Garrett Carver
Garrett Carver
14,681 Points
Garrett Carver
Garrett Carver
14,681 Points

You're right, It's not being used in this case. It would be useful if the ask() method ever needed to return an integer. For example, the program could ask the user "How many contacts would you like to add?". So you wold write:

ask("How many contacts would you like to add?", "number" )

Then you could change the program so it only asks the user for as many contacts as they specified.