Introduction
This article is part of the Scala knowledge bits Series.
Periodically, I will publish new exercises so you can slowly build up knowledge about Scala.
It is designed to be done in a very short amount of time and learn a little bit each day, just to create a routine.
This episode will teach you about Scala Comparators.
Hope you are going to enjoy it! It is designed for anyone to learn Scala from scratch and slowly learn, one Bit at a time.
After this Bit, I would love to hear your feedback in the comments down below.
Feel free to join the Discord server as well if you would like some help and support from the rest of our community.
What are we learning today?
Today we are going to learn about Scala Comparators !
A few new concepts are needed for this SKB.
First, what is a Boolean? A Boolean can only take two values: true or false. It is the result of a mathematical question. For instance, is 2 less than 5 (2 < 5), it would returns "yes" (true).
And from previous SKB, you might have noticed that assert tests if what is inside is true.
Time to try on the exercise on your own and scroll down for more information when you are done or if you are stuck.
Exercise
Here is an exercise to complete today.
If I did my job well, you should be able to guess by yourself the solution based on what you previously learned and based on the clues.
But if you get stuck, scroll down to get more information.
The goal of the exercise is to replace the ??? by a piece of code so that the exercise compiles and that's how you win! Good luck!
You can fill the exercise right in here:
Or, if it does not load, go on to Scastie (5MhccpxLQiSzOQ8CWjqjwQ).
More information about Scala Comparators
In this exercise you will learn (or have learned, if you have already solved the puzzle) about Scala Comparators.
In Scala, and in the majority of other programming languages, you have a series of built-in comparators for mathematics:
==: for equality. Some tips here:- Notice that there are two
==. With only one=, it would be an assignation (Like in:val a = 2). - In your projects as a software engineer, always be careful about comparing numbers with decimals (Like
1.5632426546, they are calledDoubleorFloat) because the computer will round those numbers. So instead ofa == b, you should be doing something like:Math.abs(a - b) < 0.01.
- Notice that there are two
!=: Not equal>: Greater than<: Less than>=: Greater than or equal<=: Less than or equal
Feel free to go back to the exercise, modify the code to try out new things and get a better intuition for Scala Comparators.
Conclusion
I hope you have learned something new or had fun during this Scala Knowledge Bit.
Please ask questions or post feedback in the comments below.
Feel free to try on the next Scala Knowledege Bit.
If you are curious about the previous Scala knowledge Bits, go check it out! :)