Receiving a specific input from user

Tito Onowu

Good day sir, I am new to programming language but i seem fascinated to C#. Am trying to write a program to counts number of steps from point A to B like the chess board. How do i get my input to accept two keys. the first being alphabet between A and G and the second input been numerical between 1 and 8. Thank you sir

3 Replies

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Vulpes13y ago
Accepted answer
Well, what's usually done with console applications is to keep asking the user for input until the input is valid using a 'do' loop.

By far the easiest way to validate input for something like this is to a use a regular expression but, as you're new to programming, you'll probably prefer some 'conventional' code such as the following:

using System;

class Test
{
static void Main()
{
string pos;

do
{
Console.Write("Enter postion A-G 1-8 : ");
pos = Console.ReadLine().ToUpper();
}
while(pos.Length != 2 ||
!(pos[0] >= 'A' && pos[0] <= 'G') ||
!(pos[1] >= '1' && pos[1] <= '8'));

Console.WriteLine("You entered {0}", pos);
Console.ReadKey();
}
}
Tito Onowu13y ago
I am much grateful, you have put the energy back to my spirit!!! Thanks a million.
Vulpes13y ago
For comparison, here's the same program using a regular expression:

using System;
using System.Text.RegularExpressions;

class Test
{
static void Main()
{
string pos;

do
{
Console.Write("Enter postion A-G 1-8 : ");
pos = Console.ReadLine().ToUpper();
}
while(!Regex.IsMatch(pos, "^[A-G][1-8]$"));

Console.WriteLine("You entered {0}", pos);
Console.ReadKey();
}
}