Hangman game - unmasking the letters.

Hello again,

I am trying to design a hangman game but I'm having an issue with trying to get to the next step from where I am.

So far I am able to generate random words, get the program to chose a word from this random list so the user can try to guess its letters.

I can also tell the user how many letters there are in the word. I've also used a for loop to display several _ (underscores) in accordance with the amount of letters in the word.

However all I've done is outputted underscores. I don't know how I'll be able to unmask these underscores so that if the user guesses the right letter then the _ will change into the correct letter in the word.

At the moment I'm just able to tell the user that the letter they have entered does indeed exist in the word.

post code please.

Since its an actual assignment I won't be able to post all of it, I hope you understand..

This is the actual part that I can't move from. There isn't a way that I know of to go back to the _'s to change them:

Code:

---

            for (int a=0; a<theword.length();a++)  //print _'s for letters in the word
        {
            cout << "_";
        }


        for (int b=0;b<theword.length();b++)    //check if the letter is in the word
        {
            if (theword[b] == user)
            cout << "this letter is in the word";
            cin >> user;
        }

---

I would use a map<char,bit> to keep track of it.
do something like this:
1. push each letter in the string to the map, and initialize the bit to false.
2. each time a letter is guessed right, turn the bit to true.
3. If you want to display the letter, check if the bit is true, if it is, cout it.

something like this

Code:

---

man<char,bool> map_name_you_use;

for (int b=0;b<theword.length();b++)    //check if the letter is in the word
{
    if (theword[b] == user)
    {
      cout << "this letter is in the word";
      map_name_you_use[theword[b]]=true;
      }
    cin >> user;
}

---

If you don't know map, then you can write a struct yourself. Something like this

Code:

---

struct keepingtrackofsomething{
  int sizeof_Array;
  char * array;
  bool * booleanarraytoreference;
};

---

I'm having difficulty to understand that.

You say to use map<char,bool> but in the code presented it says man<char,bool> what does man stand for?

"

map_name_you_use" is this a name that I come up with and use as some sort of variable name?

Where about will I put the struct? Somewhere in the main function?

Also what do you mean by "booleanarraytoreference"?

the idea that nimitzhunter tried to express was that you should create some kind of structure that holds the complete state of your game.

If you create one such structure in main() you could pass a pointer or a reference to that struct as a single parameter to the various functions of your game.

A definition of that struct for you program could be

Code:

---

struct hangman_state {
  int word_length;
  char * secret_word;
  bool * uncovered_positions;
}

---

Hope it's clearer now.

Kurt

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by hencherz

I'm having difficulty to understand that.

You say to use map<char,bool> but in the code presented it says man<char,bool> what does man stand for?

"

map_name_you_use" is this a name that I come up with and use as some sort of variable name?

Where about will I put the struct? Somewhere in the main function?

Also what do you mean by "booleanarraytoreference"?

---

That was obviously a typo.

Structs go outside of the main initialisation. It's like a class. You should practice your object oriented programming before trying to make something like a game. I made that mistake before and had to go back.