How can I Write a function that takes as input two numbers, x and y, and outputs √xy if they have the same signs, x y if they have opposite signs, and 0 if either is zero

numbers=input('x','s');
if numbers(diff(sign(x(x~=0))))
    disp('sqrt(x*y).')
elseif numbers isequal(sign(previous), sign(current))
    disp('(x/y).')
elseif numbers~=0
    disp('0.')
end 

This is the code I tried but I ended up getting an error in the second line. What is going wrong with my code?

[Walter Roberson]

x does not exist. You assigned the input to numbers . Also you input as a character vector not as numeric.

[Walter Roberson]

Hint: if the product is not positive then the result is the product, and otherwise is the square root of the product. The code becomes quite simple.

Answer 1

[Image Analyst]

You need to convert the string you collected from the user into numbers using sscanf(). Try this:

usersInputString = input('Enter x  y ', 's')
numbers = sscanf(usersInputString, '%f %f')
x = numbers(1)
y = numbers(2)
if sign(x) == sign(y)
    fprintf('sqrt(x*y) = %f\n', sqrt(x*y))

etc.