C++ Comparing character arrays

[mwhit74]

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.

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]

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]

[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]

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]

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

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]

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.

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]

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]

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]

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