C++ Comparing character arrays

working on a 'hangman' type project. i need to know how to compare the character arrays so i can "return true", i.e. the word was correctly guessed, or false if they weren't.

below is what i have so far but all it does is compare individual cells and not the whole string.

any help would be awesome, and just FYI i am a beginning programmer.

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bool matchTemplate ( const char secretWord[], const char guessTemplate[] )

{
 
    //  will return true if secretWord and guessTemplate contain the same

    //  C++ string and will return false otherwise
 
    //   ONLY ONE LOOP IS ALLOWED IN THIS FUNCTION
 
    for ( int i = 0; i < MAX_SIZE; i++ )

    {

        if ( secretWord[i] == guessTemplate[i] )

            return true;

        else

            return false;        

    }
 
}

JosAH

Chief Editor

7,781 Posts

July 13th, 2008
04:10 PM
#2

Re: C++ Comparing character arrays

You can either use plain old C strings (the strcmp function would do the job for you)
or use C++ string objects (where the compare function would help you out).

kind regards,

Jos

mwhit74

Newbie

10 Posts

July 13th, 2008
04:13 PM
#3

Re: C++ Comparing character arrays

[QUOTE
or use C++ string objects (where the compare function would help you out).

kind regards,

Jos[/QUOTE]

ok i understand i have to compare the two strings, and i dont know how to convert the char arrays to strings

JosAH

Chief Editor

7,781 Posts

July 13th, 2008
04:32 PM
#4

Re: C++ Comparing character arrays

Quote:

ok i understand i have to compare the two strings, and i dont know how to convert the char arrays to strings

Are you programming in C or are you programming in C++? both languages
have their own solutions for 'strings'. C uses the notion of a simple character
array where the last character is a '\0' (just a byte/char with all bits zero) and
C++ uses the 'string' class for the representation of strings.

kind regards,

Jos

mwhit74

Newbie

10 Posts

July 13th, 2008
04:36 PM
#5

Re: C++ Comparing character arrays

Quote:

i am programming in C++. i am not sure if you are understanding the question i am getting at.... i have char arrays and i need them to be strings but i dont know how to convert from char arrays to strings so i can compare them.

JosAH

Chief Editor

7,781 Posts

July 13th, 2008
04:40 PM
#6

Re: C++ Comparing character arrays

Quote:

Don't worry, I do understand ;-) There is a string constructor that takes an ordinary
char array and the number of chars that should be converted to a string object.
Have a look at this reference.

kind regards,

Jos

newb16

Member

98 Posts

July 14th, 2008
11:27 AM
#7

Re: C++ Comparing character arrays

Quote:

reference.

I don't think his prof will be happy with something like if(std::string(secretWord)== std::string(guessTemplate)) { ... }
It's op's own responsibility to understand how strings are represented as arrays and write loop-based strcmp routine.

oler1s

Expert

630 Posts

July 14th, 2008
01:16 PM
#8

Re: C++ Comparing character arrays

Quote:

It's op's own responsibility to understand how strings are represented as arrays and write loop-based strcmp routine.

There's no evidence that this project has a "use only C strings and no cstring allowed" clause. Writing string handling routines is an excellent learning exercise, but I doubt this is it.

newb16

Member

98 Posts

July 14th, 2008
01:59 PM
#9

Re: C++ Comparing character arrays

Quote:

There's no evidence that this project has a "use only C strings and no cstring allowed" clause. Writing string handling routines is an excellent learning exercise, but I doubt this is it.

Then what is the following comment for in case of std::string allowed?
// ONLY ONE LOOP IS ALLOWED IN THIS FUNCTION

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