What am I doing wrong?

Question

operators.swift

// Enter your code below
let value = 200
let divisor = 5

let someOperation = 20 + 400 % 10 / 2 - 15
let anotherOperation = 52 * 27 % 200 / 2 + 5

// Task 1 - Enter your code below
let result:Int = value % divisor

// Task 2 - Enter your code below
if (result == 0) {
    let isPerfectMultiple:Int = result
}

Answer 1 · 2018-05-16T19:30:45Z

May 16, 2018 7:30pm

Hi Sergei,

I can understand how this challenge might be confusing. The challenge text is somewhat vague about what it wants you to end up with, and the error text is misleading because the code you wrote does compile.

Let's get a handle on what the question really wants from you, and then we can look at your code to see why it isn't successful.

Your step 1 code is fine, but when we get to step 2, the challenge asks:

Compare the value of result to 0 using the equality operator and assign the resulting value to a constant named isPerfectMultiple.

So the question wants there to be a constant with the name isPerfectMultiple at the end of your code. Because you declare your constant inside the if statement, you never end your program with a value in isPerfectMultiple (it disappears at the end of your if statement). I believe this is what is causing a compiler error: somewhere Treehouse is adding code to your code that looks for isPerfectMultiple, but it doesn't exist.

Even if isPerfectMultiple did persist beyond your if statement, hopefully you can see that it would only ever have a value if the if test evaluated to true (if you're not seeing that right away, mentally step through your code in the situation where divisor does not perfectly divide into value (e.g., 7 and 8).

So, if you want to lay out your code the way that you have, then you need to declare (but not initialise) isPerfectMultiple before your if statement, then assign a value to it inside your if statement (making sure to also cover the circumstance where result is false) (use else).

Then your code will have a value for isPerfectMultiple at the end of your program and you will no longer have a compiler error. However, you will still have an error because what the question wants isPerfectMultiple to be is the result of comparing result to 0 (i.e., true or false), not the value inside result (i.e., an int). So instead of assigning result to isPerfectMultiple, you assign true when your if evaluates to true or false when your if evaluates to false.

At this point, you might be thinking, 'it seems very long-winded to have to write an if and an else just to assign the result of a true/false comparison into a variable.` And you would be right. While the above-described fixes will cause your code to pass the challenge, there is a much better way.

It comes from remembering that result == 0 is not just a test, it is a value, either true or false and like any other value, it can be assigned to a variable or constant. Consider the following example:

let a = 3
let b = 5
let a_is_greater_than_b = a > b
print(a_is_greater_than_b) // will print 'false'

Hope that clears everything up

Cheers

Alex

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Sergei Kobyakov

Sergei Kobyakov

What am I doing wrong?

1 Answer

Alex Koumparos

Alex Koumparos