Counting letters in each state

Here's the program:

Code:

---

#include <iostream>
#include <iomanip>

using namespace std;

int main()
{

  const char states[50][25] = { "Alabama", "Alaska", "Arizona", "Arkansas", "California", "Colorado", "Connecticut", "Delaware",
  "Florida", "Georgia", "Hawaii", "Idaho", "Illinois", "Indiana", "Iowa", "Kansas", "Kentucky", "Louisiana", "Maine", "Maryland", "Massachusetts", "Michigan", "Minnesota", "Mississippi", "Missouri", "Montana", "Nebraska", "Nevada", "New Hampshire", "New Jersey", "New Mexico", "New York", "North Carolina", "North Dakota", "Ohio", "Oklahoma", "Oregon", "Pennsylvania", "Rhode Island", "South Carolina", "South Dakota", "Tennessee", "Texas", "Utah", "Vermont", "Virginia", "Washington", "West Virginia", "Wisconsin", "Wyoming" };
 
  const char abb[50][3] = { "AL", "AK", "AZ", "AR", "CA", "CO", "CT", "DE", "FL", "GA", "HI", "ID", "IL", "IN", "IA", "KS", "KY", "LA", "ME", "MD", "MA", "MI", "MN", "MS", "MO", "MT", "NE", "NV", "NH", "NJ", "NM", "NY", "NC", "ND", "OH", "OK", "OR", "PA", "RI", "SC", "SD", "TN", "TX", "UT", "VT", "VA", "WA", "WV", "WI", "WY" };

  char alphabet[54]={"abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ"};

 
 
  cout << "Select a state: " << endl;
 
  for ( int count = 0; count < 51; count++ ) { // count represents corresponding state numbers

      if ( count != 0 ) { // eliminates the zero in the array
      cout << setw( 10 ) << count << setw( 20 ) << states[count - 1]; // counts and ties states to 1 - 50

      if ( count % 2 == 0 ) // if count is divisible by 2, begin new line of output (creates two columns)
        cout << endl;

      } // end if structure

  } // end for structure
 
  cin >> count; // state number entered and matches count

***********************************
  int lettercount[53];

      for ( int i = 0 ; i < 56 ; i++ )

      lettercount[count][i]]++;

***********************************
  cout << "You've selected " << states[count-1] << " state." << endl;
  cout << "Abbreviation is " << abb[count-1] << " and state name length is " << lettercount << endl;

     
return 0;

}

---

This code works until I try to implement counting the letters of the states (between the asterisks).
Arrays are still very new (and complicated) to me.
Could someone point me in the right direction?

You could just use strlen to get the length of the string.

If you need to calculate the length yourself, then you should loop through each character in the state name. In other words, the for loop should not end when i < 56 is false, it should end when the ith letter in the state name is not null is false.

Unfortunately we haven't covered strlen just yet; we have to have the program count it.

Code:

---

if ( states != '\0' )
  for ( lettercount = 0; lettercount < states; lettercount++ );

---

I've come up with this, knowing a counter needs to count each letter and output it....however "states" is declared char, not int, and I'm not sure how to tie it to an int, if that makes any sense.

What you want to do is check the character at the lettercount position to see if it is '\0'. So first step is to figure out the syntax for the character at position lettercount in the state at position count. Once you've got that syntax down, you can worry about how to formulate the loop.

Im not entirely sure I understand. You want to get a count of every letter in the states array? Thats what I got from it anyhow..

a couple ideas... (sorry no code ;) )
1. gonna need 2 loops, an outer one to traverse the states array and the inner one to count each char in the current state
2. you dont need to do any conversion from alpha to numeric, just create an int, init it to 0, and every time you find a valid char increment
3. to see when you are at the end of a states name (between quotes), test for null...

here is example of #3

if(states[i][0])
if(states[i][j])

test for valid char or test for null, either way it will tell you when either you have a valid string to read from or you are at the end of the current string

Here ya go, hope it helps and your understand. Just put it between your **** lines,

Code:

---

      int lettercount = 0;
  char check = states[count-1][0];
  int counter = 0;

        while (check != '\0')
        {
               
                counter++;
       
                lettercount++;

                        if (check == ' ') lettercount--; //spaces are not letters.
               

                check = states[count-1][counter];
               

        }

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P.S. In your array that holds the state names...why does each one hold 25 char? You know how long the longest state is. Why waste the memory? You can make to15 to be safe (it is always good to be safe).

You've worded my thoughts exactly Xhi!

Code:

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check = states[count-1][counter];

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Enahs, this is exactly what I was trying to accomplish. I knew it was a loop within a loop but wasn't sure how to "tie" them together and this does it beautifully. Thank you both very much!