Question

This is my first attempt at java problem I have been given as part of my Programming assignment.

I must make a program which calculates the average of a list of numbers that a user enters. the data enty should be terminated when 0 is entered. my problem is with this “ALL NEGATIVE NUMBERS SHOULD BE IGNORED”

for some reason the following code does not work, when I enter a negative number it should be ignored but for some reason it terminates the data enty

import java.util.*;

class Task_8
  {
public static void main()
  {

    Scanner inputLine = new Scanner(System.in);

    float row, numberentered, numbersum = 0, negativenumber = 0;
    double result, count = 0;


    System.out.println ("Welcome to Task 8 of 10 of my Programming Assignment... Nearly There!");
    System.out.println ("_____________________________________________________________________");
    System.out.println ();
    System.out.println ("Enter as many numbers as you like and this program will tell you the arithmatic mean");
    System.out.println ("Terminate data entry by entering 0");


   do{

       System.out.print ("Please enter a number: ");
        numberentered = inputLine.nextInt();

        count++;

        if (numberentered < 0)
        {
            numberentered  = negativenumber;   
        }

        numbersum = ( numberentered + numbersum ) - negativenumber;

    }

  while  ( numberentered !=0 );

     result = numbersum/count;
     System.out.println ();
     System.out.println ("*************************************");
     System.out.println ();
     System.out.println ("The sum of all of the numbers you entered is " +numbersum);
     System.out.println ("You entered " + count + " numbers");
     System.out.println ("The Average/mean of the numbers that you entered is " + result);


    System.out.println ();
    System.out.println ("*************************************");

  }
}

any Ideas guys?

Thank you

Answer 1

The variable negativenumber always has the value zero. When you set numberentered to negativenumber the “while” condition is met, and the loop exits. A better strategy would be to us “continue” to skip the rest of the loop body when a negative number was entered.