the program generates a random number when its suposed to be a random letter

The program compiles and executes fine but it generates a random number between 1-20 when i want it to generate a letter between c,d,h,and s.
thanx

Code:

---

#include <iostream>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <ctime>
#include <cstdlib>
#include <string>
using namespace std;
int main()
{
      char randsuit;
      const char suit[] = "cdhs";
      srand(time(NULL));
      randsuit = suit[rand() % (sizeof(suit)-1)];
      cout << randsuit << endl;
      system("PAUSE");
      return 0;
}

---

You might need some more help on this hopefully someone else will help you out as well.


As far as i understand it the sizeoff keyword will return the number of bytes in a given expression. so your code

Code:

---

randsuit = suit[rand() % (sizeof(suit)-1)];

---

is reading the size of the expression in that line. Not the actually elements of the array.


What you might want to do is assign the letters c,d,h, s or whatever as individual elements of the suit array, ex: char suit = {"c", "d", "h", "s", "EXIT"} Not sure the actually code in C++, I'm still learning C so...

Then your random function would be random() % 4 i think, whatever elements suits is, and you can designate what it should do when it returns a number in the length of suit ex: 1- 4.

As it stands it seems that your the number of bytes in the expression with sizeof. Hope that helps a bit. I'm sure someone else can explain it better.

Code looks good - works pretty well too.

The sizeof() is not the problem in this instance. On a char array, (sizeof(suit)-1) == strlen(suit)
But it is evaluated at compile time not at run-time