Lesson 19, FOREACH loops

John S · June 16th, 2013, 10:19 PM

This didn't work. I typed a bunch of numbers into the Items collection of the listbox, but they are seen as strings, right?

Do I need to convert each string to an integer somehow?

Or is the code supposed to cast the strings into integers?

I get an error "Specified cast is not valid. When casting from a number, the number must be less than infinity".

All of the items in my listbox are numbers less than infinity.

Code:

int total = 0;

foreach (int value in valuesListBox.Items)

{
total += value;

}

Rod Stephens · June 17th, 2013, 12:08 AM

Quote:

This didn't work. I typed a bunch of numbers into the Items collection of the listbox, but they are seen as strings, right?

Do I need to convert each string to an integer somehow?

Yes. As it says in the middle of page 231, the values in the ListBox must be numbers. But as you note, values that you add to the ListBox through the IDE are strings. You have two choices.

1) You can write code to place numbers in the ListBox as in:

Code:

myListBox.Items.Add(1337);

The ListBox will display the value and make it look like text "1337" but it is actually a number.

2) Or you can make the code parse the values in the ListBox.

Quote:

Or is the code supposed to cast the strings into integers?

You need to parse the values like this:

Code:

int total = 0;
foreach (string value in valuesListBox.Items)
{
    total += int.Parse(value);
}

John S · June 17th, 2013, 12:33 PM

Ok, Parse is what I was trying to remember.

Wish the code in the book had been correct in the first place.

Rod Stephens · June 17th, 2013, 12:36 PM

The code in the book is correct. The text even says the values in the ListBox must be numbers not text.

The difference is that you wanted to load the values at design time and not have the program fill them in. That's a reasonable thing to do and might have been a good example but that's not what the example in the text does.

John S · June 17th, 2013, 02:09 PM

Ok, if the code is correct, why did it not work?

Yes, I read the text about the "Listbox must contain integers ... ".

Your earlier post said that one way to load numbers is to use :

Code:

myListBox.Items.Add(1337);

which, in this case, would be :

Code:

valuesListBox.Items.Add(1337);

but where does it say that in the example in the book?

If the book had included that line, then the code would have worked.

But where would one put that line??

As the code includes a check to make sure the listbox is not empty, one could not include that line before the check, or that would negate the check.

If one adds it after the check, then the code stops at the messagebox.

That is why I assumed the numbers must be entered by the user, not by the code.

But how does the user enter numbers into a ListBox? Would not a textbox be required?

So I entered numbers(strings) via the listbox Properties, but couldn't remember how to convert them to integers.

Parse was the solution.