Playing around with java

Question

Im fairly new to the whole programing thing, and for starters, i was thinking of using java to create a calculator that uses fractions. How would i go about doing this.
So far, i have managed to create one that uses integers, but i seem to draw a blank with fractions.
Any ideas anyone.

Answer 1

Unless I've missed something significant, Java doesn't have built-in support for fractions. Actually offhand I can't think of ANY language that has built-in support for a fractional number type. (I'm not counting floating points; let's not get into a semantic argument...)
So, assuming you really do mean fractions (numbers expressed as a ratio of two integers) and not just any number system that allows values between integers, you'd have to build support for that. This is a non-trivial task; one really interesting part is dealing with the fact that two fractions can be numerically equal but have different representations (e.g., 3/4 and 9/12). I'd suggest writing this code completely separately from the calculator or any user interface. Write test code to run it. Remember to deal with stuff like greatest common denominator calculations, etc. Then go back and add your code to your calculator program when you're done.
If you really do just mean a number system that can represent values between consecutive integers, then take a look at java.math.BigDecimal.