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I am having an issue with the for loop near the end of this code.

The loop is for a hangman game, and essentially the loop cycles through the char array with the secret word, and compares the user guess to each element in the char array. If it is found, it updates the output to show the letter and resets the counter to 0, or else if the counter equals the length of the secret word, that means the loop did not find the char and it should both add one to the display (for the hangman gallows) and place the incorrect guess in the wrong guess array.

The problem I am having here is that, for the most part the loop works as intended, but occasionally it will read a correct answer as being both correct and still places it within the wrong guess array, as well as increment the gallows display value.

It does this seemingly at random, and only when I play a second game. I thought it was an issue with the counter, but I have that reset to 0 both at the start of the while loop and reset to zero in the for loop if the correct answer is found.

So I don't know why it would read a correct answer as correct and still place it in the wrongChoice array, since the counter at that point should not be wordLength - 1. Here is the code:

while(!winner)
        {
            count = 0;
            for(int i = 0; i < secretWord.length(); i++)
                cout << userPrompt[i] << " ";
            cout << "\n" << endl;
            cout << "Wrong Guess: ";
            for(int i = 0; i < (secretWord.length() + 6); i++)
            {
                cout << userChoice[i] << " ";
            }
            cout << "\n" << endl;
            displayGallows(display);

            if(display == 6)
            {
                cout << "Sorry, you lost!" << endl;
                break;
            }

            cout << "Enter a letter: ";
            cin >> userGuess;
            while(!cin)
            {
                cin.ignore();
                cin.clear();
                cin.sync();
                cout << "Error reading input character! Try Again!" << endl;
                cout << "Enter a letter: ";
                cin >> userGuess;
            }
            guessCount++;
            cin.ignore();
            for(int i = 0; i < secretWord.length(); i++)
            {
                if(word[i] == tolower(userGuess))
                {
                    userPrompt[i] = tolower(userGuess);
                    count = 0;
                }
                else if(count == (wordLength - 1))
                {
                    display++;
                    userChoice[guessCount - 1] = toupper(userGuess);
                }
                count++;
            }
            winner = checkWin(word, userPrompt, display, secretWord);       
        }
        again = playAgain();
Tim Seguine
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Dragon Wolf
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    Sounds like a job for the debugger of your choice. – Nathan Monteleone Dec 16 '13 at 22:03
  • actually, as this is only my first semester in programming, our teacher didn't care to teach us how to use a debugger.....I have tried using Visual Basics debugger, but since I am a complete novice I had no luck trying to figure out that debugger on my own, and our teach says we learn how to use the debugger next semester :/ hard to figure all that stuff out on your own...... I go to these boards because it takes the teach at least 5 days to even return our email inquiries and by then the projects or assignments are already due – Dragon Wolf Dec 16 '13 at 23:52
  • all that said, that is why I TRY to explain it the best I can when I post, including how I ASSUME the code should run, to show that I am trying to learn from these and not just get a quick answer to move on..... I really want to know/understand coding, not just get a quick A – Dragon Wolf Dec 16 '13 at 23:59
  • Edit your post and clean up your code a bit... especially once you figure out what the answer is. You may recover your down votes... (cout << "\n" << endl; is getting you 2 new lines??) – Michael Dec 17 '13 at 09:54
  • Lacking a debugger, your best bet is to cout the values of the variables that you think are going wrong. That way you can narrow down where you went wrong. – Nathan Monteleone Dec 17 '13 at 14:29

1 Answers1

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A guess here, but is it only/always the first character that gives you the problem?

You use count as your detector if the userGuess was in the word[] somewhere, but if it was at the first character in word[] then count still increments the same way as if if the first character was wrong. So at the end of your loop it also takes the branch of the incorrect choice. Really what you wanted was to check after the loop ended... not every iteration of the loop!

try this:

        bool found = false;
        for(int i = 0; i < secretWord.length(); i++)
        {
            if(word[i] == tolower(userGuess))
            {
                userPrompt[i] = tolower(userGuess);
                found = true;
            }
        }

        if( !found )
        {
            display++;
            userChoice[guessCount - 1] = toupper(userGuess);
        }
Michael
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