From: Josh Cheek <josh.cheek@...>
Date: 2010-04-13T15:40:19+09:00
Subject: Re: Method to groom a string to floating point representation

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On Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 9:34 PM, Alex DeCaria <alex.decaria@millersville.edu
> wrote:

> I have a program that asks for the user to enter a string that
> represents a floating point number.  Everytime a new character is typed
> I want a method that checks to make sure the string makes sense as a
> floating point number, and if not, deletes any bad characters.  For
> instance, if the user enters '4.5e+6.7' I want the method to delete the
> extra decimal place and return '4.5e+67'.  Or, if the user enters
> something like '4.5+e7' it deletes the misplaced plus sign and returens
> '4.7e7'.  In short, I want the method to only allow correct
> representations of floating point numbers, but I want it to remain as a
> string.  Anything other than a number or +, -, ., or e or E, should be
> deleted.
>
> I wrote a method that works like I want (attached), but it is long and
> cumbersome.  I'm wondering if anyone has a shorter, better way to do
> this.
>
> --Alex
>
> Attachments:
> http://www.ruby-forum.com/attachment/4653/clean_string_lite.rb
>
> --
> Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.
>
>
It would probably be easier if you provided a set of tests we could check
our function against, where we could be confident our function was correct
once it passed all the tests.

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