Program seems right, but not executing properly in C++

Greetings masters of coding!

I must begin by noting that I am fairly new to all of this, but I learn quickly and appreciate any advice. I am in my second quarter of C/C++ programming and I ran into this little doozy.

What seemed simple enough, I was tasked with writing a program that reads in state abbreviations and spits out the state names. No looping necessary, just a simple if, else if-type program.

I am sure that there are many ways to write this little guy, but this even stumped my professor and together we couldn't find fault in the code. I ran it on visual studio 6 and bloodshed dev, but was receiving the same output.

I even put it a cout to make sure that the characters (string) were reading into the declared variable and it was! However, the if statements were not working. I also took out the || (or) statement to simplify things and it still passes the entire run of if statements and simply prints the last else statement.

I am not requesting a different way to write it, I was hoping for knowledge as to why this would not work. On a side not, I was getting that weird auto-close thing, but I assume that is a setting in bloodshed and simply put a system("PAUSE") in there to alleviate it.

Here we go:

Code:

---

#include <iostream>
// #include <string> I tried including this, but it didn't change things
using namespace std;
//State Abbreviations



int main()
{
        const int SIZE = 3; //Setting the array size
        char abb[SIZE];

        //Get State abberviation
        cout<<"Enter in your state abbreviation ---->";
        cin>>abb;

        //Begin if statement checking for the upper or lower case entry
        if ((abb == "NC")||(abb == "nc"))
                cout<< "Your state is North Carolina\n";
        else if ((abb == "SC" ) || (abb == "sc"))
                cout<< "Your state is South Carolina\n";
        else if ((abb == "GA" ) || (abb == "ga"))
                cout<< "Your state is Georgia\n";
        else if ((abb == "FL" ) || (abb == "fl"))
                cout<< "Your state is Florida\n";
        else if ((abb == "AL" ) || (abb == "al"))
                cout<< "Your state is Alabama\n";
        else cout << "You have entered an incorrect value";
       
        system ("PAUSE");
        return 0;
}

---

Many thanks for any help.

You can't compare C-strings (which is what you're using when you should be using std::string) with ==. You must #include <cstring> and use strcmp(). If you use C++ std::strings you can use ==.

You entire problem is your comparisons are incorrects. You are trying to compare an address with a string literal.

Change your comparisons to
[code]
if ( strcmp(abb, "NC") != 1 || strcmp(abb, "nc") != 1 )
std::cout << "Your state is North Carolina\n";
[code]

You could further increase the readability of the code by building a list that holds state abbreviations, and state names, then just loop through and do a comparison based on an index of your list.

strcmp returns 0 on a match, or greater than zero, or less than zero depending on the order the two strings fall.


Quzah.

C++ String Tutorial

It's not a weird auto-closing thing by the way; the program is doing exactly what it should do upon completion. Weird auto-closing thing FAQ

Thank you everyone for your assistance! Couple things here. (This is my first couple weeks of C++ so I'm still scooting the C stuff aside and replacing it with the C++ language within the limitations of my fluency)

I apologize, but I am not yet familiar with the std:: thing, but I will research that on my own when I get a sec.

Rags, I will look into those differences as I build my knowledge base so I don't need to inquire about such elementary issues, ty.

Raigne, thank you, as that got me on the proper track, but I couldn't get it to work in that fashion and ended up using ==0 for my comparisons, however, I did end up setting up that list just to try it out and it worked fantastically.

Finally, Andrew, you picked up on my subtle begging to answer that closing window issue and after reading that article it makes sense and I shouldn't have that problem again, much appreciated.

I look forward to getting to the point where I too can assist those in need rather than looking for answers. Thank you all and if anyone was interested, here is the working code.

Code:

---

int main()
{
        const int SIZE = 3; //Setting the array size
    char abb[SIZE];
        const char north[SIZE] = "NC";
    const char northc[SIZE] = "nc";
    const char south[SIZE] = "SC";
    const char southc[SIZE] = "sc";
    const char Geo[SIZE] = "GA";
    const char Geor[SIZE] = "ga";
    const char Flo[SIZE] = "FL";
    const char Flor[SIZE] = "fl";
    const char Ala[SIZE] = "AL";
    const char Alab[SIZE] = "al";
   
        //Get State abberviation
        cout<<"Enter in your state abbreviation ---->";
        cin>> abb;
   
        //Begin if statement checking for the upper or lower case entry
        if ( (strcmp(abb, north) == 0) || (strcmp(abb, northc) == 0) )
                cout<< "Your state is North Carolina\n";
    else if ( (strcmp(abb, south) == 0) || (strcmp(abb, southc) == 0) )
                cout<< "Your state is South Carolina\n";
        else if ( (strcmp(abb, Geo) == 0) || (strcmp(abb, Geor) == 0) )
                cout<< "Your state is Georgia\n";
        else if ( (strcmp(abb, Flo) == 0) || (strcmp(abb, Flor) == 0) )
                cout<< "Your state is Florida\n";
        else if ( (strcmp(abb, Ala) == 0) || (strcmp(abb, Alab) == 0) )
                cout<< "Your state is Alabama\n";
        else cout << "You have entered an incorrect value";
       
        system ("PAUSE");
        return 0;
}

---

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Techgique

...
I apologize, but I am not yet familiar with the std:: thing, but I will research that on my own when I get a sec.

---

It's a namespace and it is used quite often within C++. Namespace FAQ

I meant more like this by the list

Code:

---

#include<iostream>
// #include <string> I tried including this, but it didn't change things
usingnamespace std;
//State Abbreviations
#include<string>
typedefstruct State
{
std::string Abbreviation;
std::string StateName;
} State;
State states[50] = { { "NC", "North Carolina"},
{ "AR", "Arkansas" },
{ "So on", " and so on you go" },
};
bool Check(const std::string& Selection)
{
for ( int x = 0; x < 50; x++ )
{
if ( states[x].Abbreviation.compare(Selection) == 0 )
{
std::cout << "\nYour selection was: " << states[x].StateName << "\n";
returntrue;
}
}
returnfalse;
}
int main()
{
std::string abb;
//Get State abberviation
cout<<"Enter in your state abbreviation ---->";
cin>>abb;
if ( !Check(abb) )
std::cout << "Failed to locate Abbreviation.\n";
system ("PAUSE");
return 0;
}


---

I will leave it to you to google on how to ignore case in string comparisons.

I don't know what you used to colourise your code, but my cat coughs up better formatted code than that!
Ripping out random spaces so it won't compile is hardly a good thing.

Perhaps press the "Go Advanced" button and preview your post before submitting?

Your cat very well may, but Copy-Paste from VS2010Pro produces the garbage you see.

edit: I am not sure why, but sometimes it copies the color from VS and not formatting, and other times it copies formatting and not color, but never both. I am not sure of the reason behind this. The problem arose once the forum was updated.

Try this:

Code:

---

#include<iostream>
#include<conio.h>
using namespace std;
 
 
int main()
{
 
        char variants;
        cout<<" Please,enter your variant> \n";
 
       
        do{
                cout<<" Variant 1 for North Caroline\n";
                cout<<" Variant 2 for South Caroline\n";
                cout<<" Variant 3 for Georgia\n";
                cout<<" Variant 4 for Florida\n";
                cout<<" Variant 5 for Alabama\n";
                cout<<" Other symbol - exit\n";
                cin>>variants;
 
 
                switch(variants)
                {
                        case'1'://if(str=="NC"||str=="nc")
                                        cout<<" Your state is North Caroline!\n";break;
                        case'2'://if(str=="SC"||str=="sc")
                                        cout<<" Your state is South Caroline!\n";break;
                        case'3'://if(str=="G"||str=="g")
                                        cout<<" Your state is Georgia!\n";break;
                        case'4'://if(str=="F"||str=="f")
                                        cout<<" Your state is Florida!\n";break;
                        case'5'://if(str=="A"||str=="a")
                                        cout<<" Your state is Alabama!\n";break;
                        default:cout<<" Good-bye!\n"; variants = '6'; break;;
                }
 
        }while(variants != '6');
                system("pause");
                return 0;
 
}

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Thanks Alex, that was actually a different way that I had it working, but it was the if/else structure that my Professor insisted upon that was what was giving me problems.