Figure out if Ans is a Number or a String

[ztrumpet]

Here's a challenge for all of you: In pure basic, figure out if Ans is a Number or a String.
It is possible, but I havn't figured out how.
If you figure it out, you win a cookie.

I have a solution for everything except the number zero.   I can't figure out how to compleatly do it.
For more info, http://www.unitedti.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=9191

[cooliojazz]

as long as ans /= B: B->A:Ans->A:If A=B:Ans is a string
Does that help?
EDIT: oops! i messed up i'll think about and redo it when i remember how it actually went, since i made this a while ago for a ramdom use of mine

[Insorak]

Hmm...

Code: [Select]

:DelVar AAns-->A
:(A and 1)
is very short, and will give 1 in Ans if input was a number, or 0 if input was a string. I'm just trying to make zero work...

[ztrumpet]

Insorak, that's exactly what I got.

Delvar AAns->A
not(not(A

I just wonder how to do it and have everything work.

[Insorak]

I want to initialize A to something other than 0 before storing Ans to A. But that's obviously impossible, because initializing A changes Ans. >_<

[ztrumpet]

Nope.

To intilize A to 500 without changing Ans:
For(A,500,0:End

[Insorak]

Would seem to work... but still not really what I was looking for.

Assume that A = i before program is run.

:Ans->A
:1 and imag(A

would work, giving 1 for all strings and 0 for all numbers.

Unfortunately, you can't increment a for loop to an imaginary value.

[miotatsu]

:DelVar A
:Prompt A
:0<abs(A
^best i got

[bfr]

Here's my 30-byte solution that works for any input:

DelVar AFor(B,1,1
Ans->A
Ans->B
A=B

One would probably want to close to have For(B,1,1:End instead if this routine were being used within a larger program.  Also, I was hoping I could get rid of DelVar A and set A and B to different values using just For( by defining B in terms of A, but I'm not sure how to do that in a small way that always works (for positive and negative values of A, etc.)

See the original post.

[ztrumpet]

That's awesome!  You've done a very good job!  That's very, very smart.  Way to go!

[Builderboy]

Genius, just explodes my mind that this can be done through all the little exploits that exist on the calculator.

[ztrumpet]

Also, I was hoping I could get rid of DelVar A and set A and B to different values using just For( by defining B in terms of A, but I'm not sure how to do that in a small way that always works (for positive and negative values of A, etc.)

What about

For(B,A,A+1:End

Would that work?

[bfr]

I think it generally would, but:
- It would make the program be 31 bytes instead of 30
- The program would fail sometimes - for example, if A were a large value like 10^98 (E98) before the program ran

[miotatsu]

this is very impressive, it really shows me how much there still is for me to learn about this wonderful language

[Builderboy]

Before this, I never though there was even a remote chance that Basic would do something like type checking.  Its something we have been telling beginers is impossible for a long time.  Now we know differently!