Question

how can i Write a small calculator that takes as input one of the four arithmetic operations, the two arguments to those operations, and then prints out the result?
just as simple as that, i don’t need a real calculator.

here is what i tried so far, but well it didn’t work:

#include <iostream>
#include <string>

using namespace std;

int main()
{
  int  x,y,result;
  string arithmatic;
  cout<<"enter the first number:";
  cin>>x;
  cout<<"enter the second number:";
  cin>>y;
  cout<<"use one of the four artimatic operations /, *, + or - :";
  cin>>arithmatic;
  if (arithmatic=="/" )
    result=x/y;
  cout<<"x / y ="<<result;
  if  (arithmatic == "*")
    result=x*y;
  cout<<"x * y ="<<result;
  if (arithmatic == "+")
    result = x + y;
  cout<<"x+y ="<<result;
  if (arithmatic == "-")
    result = x-y;
  cout<<"x-y ="<<result;
  else
  cout<<"what is this? i said use arithmatic operations!";

  return 0;
}

i know there is a lot wrong with this program, i just started learning out, and this practice was in a book.

Answer 1

A couple issues:

• You’re missing a lot of braces between your if statements. This results in std::cout being called numerous times throughout the code.
• You’re using a lot of if statements that is terminated by a single else, use if else if else instead.
• You’re using integer division rather than floating point division. If you want an “accurate” result use floats instead.