Reading Input from the User

Input and output in CLI
- Our programs use a command-line interface, where input and output come from text printed in a “terminal” or “console”
- We’ve already seen that Console.WriteLine prints text from your program on the screen to provide output to the user
- The equivalent method for reading input is Console.ReadLine(), which waits for the user to type some text in the console and then returns it to your program
- In general, the Console class represents the command-line interface
Using Console.ReadLine()
- Example usage:
```
using System;
 
class PersonalizedWelcomeMessage
{
  static void Main()
  {
    string firstName;
    Console.WriteLine("Enter your first name:");
    firstName = Console.ReadLine();
    Console.WriteLine($"Welcome, {firstName}!");
  }
}
```
  This program first declares a string variable named firstName. On the second line, it uses Console.WriteLine to display a message (instructions for the user). On the third line, it calls the Console.ReadLine() method, and assigns its return value (result) to the firstName variable. This means the program waits for the user to type some text and press “Enter”, and then stores that text in firstName. Finally, the program uses string interpolation in Console.WriteLine to display a message including the contents of the firstName variable.
- Console.ReadLine is the “inverse” of Console.WriteLine, and the way you use it is also the “inverse”
- While Console.WriteLine takes an argument, which is the text you want to display on the screen, Console.ReadLine() takes no arguments because it does not need any input from your program – it will always do the same thing
- Console.WriteLine has no “return value” - it does not give any output back to your program, and the only effect of calling it is that text is displayed on the screen
- Console.ReadLine() does have a return value, specifically a string. This means you can use the result of this method to assign a string variable, just like you can use the result of an arithmetic expression to assign a numeric variable.
- The string that Console.ReadLine() returns is one line of text typed in the console. When you call it, the computer will wait for the user to type some text and then press “Enter”, and everything the user typed before pressing “Enter” gets returned from Console.ReadLine()

Parsing user input

Console.ReadLine() always returns the same type of data, a string, regardless of what the user enters
- If you ask the user to enter a number, ReadLine will output that number as a string
- For example, if you ask the user to enter his/her age, and the user enters 21, Console.ReadLine() will return the string "21"
If we want to do any kind of arithmetic with a number provided by the user, we will need to convert that string to a numeric type like int or double. Remember that casting cannot be used to convert numeric data to or from string data.

When converting numeric data to string data, we use string interpolation:

int myAge = 29;
//This does not work:
//string strAge = (string) myAge;
string strAge = $"{myAge}";

In the other direction, we use a method called Parse to convert strings to numbers:

string strAge = "29";
//This does not work:
//int myAge = (int) strAge;
int myAge = int.Parse(strAge);

The int.Parse method takes a string as an argument, and returns an int containing the numeric value written in that string
Each built-in numeric type has its own Parse method
- int.Parse("42") returns the value 42
- long.Parse("42") returns the value 42L
- double.Parse("3.65") returns the value 3.65
- float.Parse("3.65") returns the value 3.65f
- decimal.Parse("3.65") returns the value 3.65m
The Parse methods are useful for converting user input to useable data. For example, this is how to get the user’s age as an int:
```
Console.WriteLine("Enter your age:");
string ageString = Console.ReadLine();
int age = int.Parse(ageString);
```

More detail on the `Parse` methods

Console.WriteLine is a method that takes input from your program, in the form of an argument, but does not return any output. Meanwhile, Console.ReadLine is a method that does not have any arguments, but it returns output to your program (the user’s string).
int.Parse is a method that both takes input (the string argument) and returns output (the converted int value)
When executing a statement such as
```
int answer = int.Parse("42");
```
the computer must evaluate the expression on the right side of the = operator before it can do the assignment. This means it calls the int.Parse method with the string "42" as input. The method’s code then executes, converting "42" to an integer, and it returns a result, the int value 42. This value can now be assigned to the variable answer.
Since the return value of a Parse method is a numeric type, it can be used in arithmetic expressions just like a numeric-type variable or literal. For example, in this statement:
```
double result = double.Parse("3.65") * 4;
```
To evaluate the expression on the right side of the = operator, the computer must first call the method double.Parse with the input "3.65". Then the method’s return value, 3.65, is used the math operation as if it was written 3.65 * 4. So the computer implicitly converts 4 to a double value, performs the multiplication on doubles, and gets the resulting value 14.6, which it assigns to the variable result.
Another example of using the result of Parse to do math:
```
Console.WriteLine("Please enter the year.");
string userInput = Console.ReadLine();
int curYear = int.Parse(userInput);
Console.WriteLine($"Next year it will be {curYear + 1}");
```
Note that in order to do arithmetic with the user’s input (i.e. add 1), it must be a numeric type (i.e. int), not a string. This is why we often call a Parse method on the data returned by Console.ReadLine().
The previous example can be made shorter and simpler by combining the Parse and ReadLine methods in one statement. Specifically, you can write:
```
int curYear = int.Parse(Console.ReadLine());
```
In this statement, the return value (output) of one method is used as the argument (input) to another method. When the computer executes the statement, it starts by evaluating the int.Parse(...) method call, but it cannot actually execute the Parse method yet because its argument is an expression, not a variable or value. In order to determine what value to send to the Parse method as input, it must first evaluate the Console.ReadLine() method call. Since this method has no arguments, the computer can immediately start executing it; the ReadLine method waits for the user to type a line of text, then returns that text as a string value. This return value can now be used as the argument to int.Parse, and the computer starts executing int.Parse with the user-provided string as input. When the Parse method returns an int value, this value becomes the value of the entire expression int.Parse(Console.ReadLine()), and the computer assigns it to the variable curYear.
Notice that by placing the call to ReadLine inside the argument to Parse, we have eliminated the variable userInput entirely. The string returned by ReadLine does not need to be stored anywhere (i.e. in a variable); it only needs to exist long enough to be sent to the Parse method as input.

Correct input formatting

The Parse methods assume that the string they are given as an argument (i.e. the user input) actually contains a valid number. But the user may not follow directions, and invalid input can cause a variety of errors.
If the string does not contain a number at all – e.g. int badIdea = int.Parse("Hello"); – the program will fail with the error System.FormatException
If the string contains a number with a decimal point, but the Parse method is for an integer datatype, the program will also fail with System.FormatException. For example, int fromFraction = int.Parse("52.5"); will cause this error. This will happen even if the number in the string ends in “.0” (meaning it has no fractional part), such as int wholeNumber = int.Parse("45.0");.
If the string has extraneous text before or after the number, such as "$18.95" or 1999!, the program will fail with the error System.FormatException
If the string contains a number that cannot fit in the desired datatype (due to overflow or underflow), the behavior depends on the datatype:
- For the integer types (int and long), the program will fail with the error System.OverflowException. For example, int.Parse("3000000000") will cause this error because 3000000000 is larger than $2^{31} - 1$ (the maximum value an int can store).
- For the floating-point types (float and double), no error will be produced. Instead, the result will be the same as if an overflow or underflow had occurred during normal program execution: an overflow will produce the value Infinity, and an underflow will produce the value 0. For example, float tooSmall = float.Parse("1.5e-55"); will assign tooSmall the value 0, while double tooBig = double.Parse("1.8e310"); will assign tooBig the value double.Infinity.
Acceptable string formats vary slightly between the numeric types, due to the different ranges of values they can contain
- int.Parse and long.Parse will accept strings in the format ([ws])([sign])[digits]([ws]), where [ws] represents empty spaces and groups in parentheses are optional. This means that a string with leading or trailing spaces will not cause an error, unlike a string with other extraneous text around the number.
- decimal.Parse will accept strings in the format ([ws])([sign])([digits],)[digits](.[digits])([ws]). Note that you can optionally include commas between groups of digits, and the decimal point is also optional. This means a string like "18,999" is valid for decimal.Parse but not for int.Parse.
- float.Parse and double.Parse will accept strings in the format ([ws])([sign])([digits],)[digits](.[digits])(e[sign][digits])([ws]). As with decimal, you can include commas between groups of digits. In addition, you can write the string in scientific notation with the letter “e” or “E” followed by an exponent, such as "-9.44e15".

Output with Variables

Converting from numbers to strings

As we saw in a previous lecture (Datatypes and Variables), the Console.WriteLine method needs a string as its argument
If the variable you want to display is not a string, you might think you could cast it to a string, but that will not work – there is no explicit conversion from string to numeric types
- This code:
```
double fraction = (double) 47 / 6;
string text = (string) fraction;
```
  will produce a compile error
You can convert numeric data to a string using string interpolation, which we’ve used before in Console.WriteLine statements:
```
int x = 47, y = 6;
double fraction = (double) x / y;
string text = $"{x} divided by {y} is {fraction}";
```
After executing this code, text will contain “47 divided by 6 is 7.8333333”
String interpolation can convert any expression to a string, not just a single variable. For example, you can write:
```
Console.WriteLine($"{x} divided by {y} is {(double) x / y}");
Console.WriteLine($"{x} plus 7 is {x + 7}");
```
This will display the following output:
```
47 divided by 6 is 7.8333333
47 plus 7 is 54
```
Note that writing a math expression inside a string interpolation statement does not change the values of any variables. After executing this code, x is still 47, and y is still 6.

The `ToString()` method

String interpolation does not “magically know” how to convert numbers to strings – it delegates the task to the numbers themselves
This works because all data types in C# are objects, even the built-in ones like int and double
- Since they are objects, they can have methods
All objects in C# are guaranteed to have a method named ToString(), whose return value (result) is a string
Meaning of ToString() method: “Convert this object to a string, and return that string”
This means you can call the ToString() method on any variable to convert it to a string, like this:
```
int num = 42;
double fraction = 33.5;
string intText = num.ToString();
string fracText = fraction.ToString();
```
After executing this code, intText will contain the string “42”, and fracText will contain the string “33.5”
String interpolation calls ToString() on each variable or expression within braces, asking it to convert itself to a string
- In other words, these three statements are all the same:
```
Console.WriteLine($"num is {num}");
Console.WriteLine($"num is {intText}");
Console.WriteLine($"num is {num.ToString()}");
```
  Putting num within the braces is the same as calling ToString() on it.

String Concatenation

Now that we’ve seen ToString(), we can introduce another operator: the concatenation operator
Concatenation basics
- Remember, the + operator is defined separately for each data type. The “double + double” operator is different from the “int + int” operator.
- If the operand types are string (i.e. string + string), the + operator performs concatenation, not addition
- You can concatenate string literals or string variables:
```
string greeting = "Hi there, " + "John";
string name = "Paul";
string greeting2 = "Hi there, " + name;
```
  After executing this code, greeting will contain “Hi there, John” and greeting2 will contain “Hi there, Paul”
Concatenation with mixed types
- Just like with the other operators, both operands (both sides of the +) must be the same type
- If one operand is a string and the other is not a string, the ToString() method will automatically be called to convert it to a string
- Example: In this code:
```
int bananas = 42;
string text = "Bananas: " + bananas;
```
  The + operator has a string operand and an int operand, so the int will be converted to a string. This means the computer will call bananas.ToString(), which returns the string “42”. Then the string + string operator is called with the operands “Bananas:” and “42”, which concatenates them into “Bananas: 42”.

Output with concatenation

We now have two different ways to construct a string for Console.WriteLine: Interpolation and concatenation
Concatenating a string with a variable will automatically call its ToString() method, just like interpolation will. These two WriteLine calls are equivalent:
```
int num = 42;
Console.WriteLine($"num is {num}");
Console.WriteLine("num is " + num);
```

It’s usually easier to use interpolation, since when you have many variables the + signs start to add up. Compare the length of these two equivalent lines of code:

Console.WriteLine($"The variables are {a}, {b}, {c}, {d}, and {e}");
Console.WriteLine("The variables are " + a + ", " + b + ", " + c + ", " + d + ", and " + e);

Be careful when using concatenation with numeric variables: the meaning of + depends on the types of its two operands
- If both operands are numbers, the + operator does addition
- If both operands are strings, the + operator does concatenation
- If one argument is a string, the other argument will be converted to a string using ToString()
- Expressions in C# are always evaluated left-to-right, just like arithmetic
- Therefore, in this code:
```
int var1 = 6, var2 = 7;
Console.WriteLine(var1 + var2 + " is the result");
Console.WriteLine("The result is " + var1 + var2);
```
  The first WriteLine will display “13 is the result”, because var1 and var2 are both ints, so the first + operator performs addition on two ints (the resulting number,13, is then converted to a string for the second + operator). However, the second WriteLine will display “The result is 67”, because both + operators perform concatenation: The first one concatenates a string with var1 to produce a string, and then the second one concatenates this string with var2
- If you want to combine addition and concatenation in the same line of code, use parentheses to make the order and grouping of operations explicit. For example:
```
int var1 = 6, var2 = 7;
Console.WriteLine((var1 + var2) + " is the result");
Console.WriteLine("The result is " + (var1 + var2));
```
  In this code, the parentheses ensure that var1 + var2 is always interpreted as addition.

ℙrinℂomℙ

Explorer

Inputs and Outputs

Reading Input from the User

Parsing user input

More detail on the `Parse` methods

Correct input formatting

Output with Variables

Converting from numbers to strings

The `ToString()` method

String Concatenation

Output with concatenation

Graph View

Table of Contents

Backlinks

ℙrinℂomℙ

Explorer

Inputs and Outputs

Reading Input from the User

Parsing user input

More detail on the Parse methods

Correct input formatting

Output with Variables

Converting from numbers to strings

The ToString() method

String Concatenation

Output with concatenation

Graph View

Table of Contents

Backlinks

More detail on the `Parse` methods

The `ToString()` method