Introduction

Constants

Constants in Gleam are a way to give names to values. They are defined using the const keyword.

pub const pi: Float = 3.14159

pub fn circle_area(radius: Float) -> Float {
  radius *. radius *. pi
}

When defined with the pub keyword module constants can be accessed from other modules, otherwise they can only be accessed from within the module they are defined in.

Orders

The gleam/order module in Gleam's standard library contains the Order type, which is used to compare values.

The definition of Order looks like this:

pub type Order {
  Gt
  Eq
  Lt
}

The type has three variants, each used to represent the relationship between value and another value:

Gt - the value is larger than the other value.
Eq - the value is equal to the other value.
Lt - the value is smaller than the other value.

If a data type can be compared by size it is common for the module to define a compare function which returns an Order value. For example, gleam/float and gleam/int define compare functions that operate on floats and ints respectively.

int.compare(1, 2)
// -> Lt

int.compare(2, 2)
// -> Eq

float.compare(1.0, 2.0)
// -> Lt

Sorting functions such as list.sort commonly take a function that returns an Order value, allowing the caller to define how the list should be sorted.

list.sort([3, 7, 3, 1], by: int.compare)
// -> [1, 3, 3, 7]

Instructions

Tori is a climate journalist and she wants to write an article about the weather in different cities. She has data about the weather in different cities and she wants to rank them based on their temperature, but some of the temperatures are in Fahrenheit and some are in Celsius. She needs your help to convert the temperatures to the same unit and rank them.

1. Convert Fahrenheit to Celsius

Define a the fahrenheit_to_celsius function that takes a temperature in Fahrenheit as an argument and returns the temperature in Celsius.

To convert Fahrenheit to Celsius subtract 32 from the Fahrenheit value, and then divide the result by 1.8.

fahrenheit_to_celsius(72.5)
// -> 22.5

2. Compare two temperatures

Define the compare_temperature function that takes two temperatures and returns an Order value indicating whether the first temperature is less than, equal to, or greater than the second temperature.

compare_temperature(Celsius(30.5), Fahrenheit(82.1))
// -> Gt

3. Sort cities by temperature

Define the sort_cities_by_temperature function that takes a list of cities and returns them from coldest to warmest.

sort_cities_by_temperature([
  #("London", Celsius(30.5)),
  #("Paris", Fahrenheit(82.1))
])
// -> [
//   #("Paris", Fahrenheit(82.1)),
//   #("London", Celsius(30.5))
// ]