I'd recommend that you change a few things here. Are you familiar with object-oriented design? If not, it's highly recommended that you read about that if you're looking to write code in C++ (Or just writing code in general, as it's a pretty major aspect of many programming languages)
Consider treating each of your menus and submenus as individual objects. Each time you enter the loop, use an object pointer to call a method that prints the current menu text.
Then, take the input from the user as normal, and change the menu object you're using now.
This is perhaps not the most ideal way to do a console menu, but it will give you a very strong grounding in how objected-oriented programming works.
I've attached an example :
#include <iostream>
#include <string>
class BaseMenu
{
public:
BaseMenu() { m_MenuText = "This shouldn't ever be shown!"; } // This is the constructor - we use it to set class-specific information. Here, each menu object has its own menu text.
virtual ~BaseMenu() { } // This is the virtual destructor. It must be made virtual, else you get memory leaks - it's not a quick explaination, I recommend you read up on it
virtual BaseMenu *getNextMenu(int iChoice, bool& iIsQuitOptionSelected) = 0; // This is a 'pure virtual method', as shown by the "= 0". It means it doesn't do anything. It's used to set up the framework
virtual void printText() // This is made virtual, but doesn't *have* to be redefined. In the current code I have written, it is not redefined as we store the menu text as a string in the object
{
std::cout << m_MenuText << std::endl;
}
protected:
std::string m_MenuText; // This string will be shared by all children (i.e. derived) classes
};
class FirstMenu : public BaseMenu // We're saying that this FirstMenu class is a type of BaseMenu
{
FirstMenu()
{
m_MenuText = "Main Menu\n" // What we are doing here is setting up the string to be displayed later
+ "Please make your selection\n" // What we are doing here is setting up the string to be displayed later
+ "1 - Start game\n" // What we are doing here is setting up the string to be displayed later
+ "2 - Options\n" // What we are doing here is setting up the string to be displayed later
+ "3 - Quit\n" // What we are doing here is setting up the string to be displayed later
+ "Selection: "; // What we are doing here is setting up the string to be displayed later
}
BaseMenu *getNextMenu(int choice, bool& iIsQuitOptionSelected) // This is us actually defining the pure virtual method above
{
BaseMenu *aNewMenu = 0; // We're setting up the pointer here, but makin sure it's null (0)
switch (choice) // Notice - I have only done "options". You would obviously need to do this for all of your menus
{
case 2:
{
aNewMenu = new SecondMenu; // We're creating our new menu object here, and will send it back to the main function below
}
case 3:
{
// Ah, they selected quit! Update the bool we got as input
iIsQuitOptionSelected = true;
}
default:
{
// Do nothing - we won't change the menu
}
}
return aNewMenu; // Sending it back to the main function
}
};
class SecondMenu : public BaseMenu
{
SecondMenu()
{
m_MenuText = "OptionsMenu\n"
+ "Please make your selection\n"
+ "1 - ????"
+ "2 - dafuq?";
}
BaseMenu *getNextMenu(int choice, bool& iIsQuitOptionSelected) // This is us actually defining the pure virtual method above
{
BaseMenu *aNewMenu = 0; // We're setting up the pointer here, but makin sure it's null (0)
switch (choice) // Notice - I have only done options. You would obviously need to do this for all of your menus
{
case 1:
{
aNewMenu = new FirstMenu; // We're creating our new menu object here, and will send it back to the main function below
}
break;
case 2:
{
aNewMenu = new FirstMenu; // We're creating our new menu object here, and will send it back to the main function below
}
break;
default:
{
// Do nothing - we won't change the menu
}
}
return aNewMenu; // Sending it back to the main function
}
};
int main (int argc, char **argv)
{
BaseMenu* aCurrentMenu = new FirstMenu; // We have a pointer to our menu. We're using a pointer so we can change the menu seamlessly.
bool isQuitOptionSelected = false;
while (!isQuitOptionSelected) // We're saying that, as long as the quit option wasn't selected, we keep running
{
aCurrentMenu.printText(); // This will call the method of whichever MenuObject we're using, and print the text we want to display
int choice = 0; // Always initialise variables, unless you're 100% sure you don't want to.
cin >> choice;
BaseMenu* aNewMenuPointer = aBaseMenu.getNextMenu(choice, isQuitOptionSelected); // This will return a new object, of the type of the new menu we want. Also checks if quit was selected
if (aNewMenuPointer) // This is why we set the pointer to 0 when we were creating the new menu - if it's 0, we didn't create a new menu, so we will stick with the old one
{
delete aCurrentMenu; // We're doing this to clean up the old menu, and not leak memory.
aCurrentMenu = aNewMenuPointer; // We're updating the 'current menu' with the new menu we just created
}
}
return true;
}
Note that this might be a bit complex for starting out. I strongly recommend you read the other answers people have posted. It should give you a few approaches on how to do it, and you can progress from the basic up to the more complex, examining each change.
