How can I print numbers between two numbers that I enter?

Question

I am creating a program which asks the user to enter two numbers. It will then print the numbers the user entered and the numbers between the two numbers in numerical order. I declared and initialized two variables, which are 'number1' and 'number2'.

    int number1;
    int number2;
    do{
        Scanner input = new Scanner(System.in);
        System.out.print("Enter the first number: " );
        number1 = input.nextInt();
    
        System.out.print("Enter the second number: " );
        number2 = input.nextInt();
    
        if(number1 == number2)
        {
           System.out.println("The numbers you entered equal with each other. Try again.\n");
        }
    }while(number1 == number2);

    if (number1 > number2)
    {
        for(int a = number2; a <= number1; a++)
        {
            System.out.print(a + " ");
        }
    }
    
    else
    {
        for(int a = number1; a <= number2; a++)
        {
            System.out.print(a + " ");
        }
    } 

How do I make it so it also prints only the numbers between 'number1' and 'number2'?

Answer 1

The first part of your code was fine, if you want to do it this way.

    Scanner scanner = new Scanner(System.in);
    int first, second;

    do {
        System.out.print("Enter the first number: ");
        first = scanner.nextInt();
        System.out.print("Enter the second number: ");
        second = scanner.nextInt();

        if (first == second) {
            System.out.println("The numbers you entered equal with each other. Try again.\n");
        }
    } while (first == second);

For the second part, I'd recommend determining which number is which (smaller/bigger) instead of using duplicate code. Also you need to only cycle through numbers in between the numbers you chose, so you have to change your for cycle

  //determine which number is bigger/smaller
  int smaller = Math.min(first, second);
  int bigger = Math.max(first, second);

  for(int i = smaller+1 ; i < bigger ; i++){
      System.out.print(i + " ");
  }

The only odd scenario here is where you input two numbers which are adjacent, which will output no numbers. For example 3 and 4.

Answer 2

int max = Math.max(number1, number2); for(int i = (max == number1 ? number2 : number1) + 1 ; i < max ; i++) { System.out.println(i); }