Question Pertaining to User Input

Question

I'm have trouble figuring out how to prompt for user input and then use that user input as part of my code. For instance, I want to declare two variables that will hold complex numbers. Then, I want the user to input two complex numbers. After this, I want to place those two newly inputted into the variables that I created. Then I want to determine which of those two has a greater norm/modulus. Finally, I want to print those results out.
Here is my code so far:
Normalizable m1 = new Complex();
Normalizable m2 = new Complex();
         System.out.println("Enter the real and imaginary parts of a complex number: ");
         BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(System.in));Please point me in the right direction.

Answer 1

I was making two points at once - and in doing so I might have made it sound more daunting than it really is.
The first point was a direct answer to your question: use readLine() to get the user input, String methods to break it up and parseDouble() to obtain numerical values to create your Normalizable/Complex.
I really don't think there's a more straight foward way of approaching things. Try it and see if you can sucessfully read in a single complex number and display it.
{noformat}
Enter the real and imaginary parts of a complex number>12 -5
You entered 12.000 - 5.000i
{noformat}You will need the API docs for the relevant classes and have read them. Post what you've come up with for this first part of the problem if you get stuck. (I doubt if anyone here will actually write the code for you, since that would take all the fun out of it.)
Regarding the second point, you're right: by suggesting an auxillary method to read and parse the input I was adding some complexity. Feel free to ignore that suggestion. Personally I prefer a little complexity if it reduces complicated code to managable pieces. Complications will grow into a tangled mess (and are a place for bugs to live in); complexity can always be dealt with one small well documented chunk at a time.