Thread: Target Solver

I have been working on creating a target solver for the SMH (see http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/puzzles/target.html).

The program is working well except for the part about:

In making a word, each letter must be used once only.

The function target receives the nine letters in the form 'tetremoei' where the first letter ('t') is the centre letter. The problem I beleive is the if where I call CountCharsStr not the function itself.
I have commented out the irrelevant functions that should not have any effect on fixing the problem.

Code:

int CountCharsStr(char* pstrBuf, char chAscii){
	int iCount = 0,iLength = strlen(pstrBuf),iCounter = 0;
	for (iCounter=0; iCounter<iLength; iCounter++)
	{
		if (pstrBuf[iCounter]==chAscii) iCount++;
	}
	return iCount;
}

int target(char *letterBuf)
{
	int printwrd, i, outputwrdcnt = 0;
	FILE *text;
	char *szLine;

	szLine = (char*) malloc(MAX_PATH);
	if(szLine==NULL) {
	    MessageBox(NULL, "Memory couldn't be allocated.", "Target Solver",
		MB_ICONEXCLAMATION | MB_OK);
		return 1;
	}
	fflush(stdin);
	text = fopen("words.txt","r");
	if (!text)    {
		MessageBox(NULL, "Could not find dictionary.", "Target Solver",
			MB_ICONEXCLAMATION | MB_OK);
		return 0;
	}
	while(fgets(szLine,MAX_PATH,text) != NULL)    {
		if (((strlen(szLine) <= 10) && (strlen(szLine) > 4)) && (strchr(szLine,letterBuf[0]))) printwrd = 1;
		else continue;

		// Filter out Capitals

		//Filter out '-', ' ' and ','

		for (i=0; i <= strlen(szLine)-2; i++) {
			if (!strchr(letterBuf,szLine[i]) || CountCharsStr(szLine,letterBuf[i]) > CountCharsStr(letterBuf,letterBuf[i]))				{
				printwrd = 0;
				break;
			}
		}
		if (printwrd) {
                        //output szLine
			outputwrdcnt++;
		}
	}
        //Output outputwrdcnt
	fclose(text);
	free(szLine);
	return 0;
}

Thanks for the quick reply. I have split it into two loops as I didn't want to ditch the if (!strchr(... as this checks if all the letters in szLine are contained (in or out of order) in letterBuf. This works the same as I started with, as I am not sure exactly how I should break it up. The first for is fine (works perfectly) the second isn't. I am quite sure my logic is correct but it is hard to tell as I can't debug very well. The CountCharsStr line filters out the words that meet the condition, not the other way round. Also as I haven't been able to debug it I am not sure why changing: for (i=0; i <= strlen(szLine)-2; i++) to for (i=0; i <= strlen(szLine)-1; i++) returns 0 words. Also note that I'm reading in words form a text file in the following format, so szLine contains the word followed by '\n':

aback
abaft
abandon
abandoned

Code:

		for (i=0; i <= strlen(szLine)-2; i++) {
			if (!strchr(letterBuf,szLine[i])) {
				printwrd = 0;
				break;
			}
		}

		for (i=0; i <= strlen(szLine)-2; i++) {
			if (CountCharsStr(szLine,letterBuf[i]) > CountCharsStr(letterBuf,letterBuf[i]))	{
				printwrd = 0;
				break;
			}
		}

The point of the two for-loops is that they have different boundaries! The first for-loop needs to check every letter in the dictionary word; that's fine. The second for-loop needs to check every letter in the target string; that is, it must go from 0 to 8 every time without fail.

Thanks, tabstop, I am suprised I didn't try that. It works 100&#37; now.