code not running in console! Way to simplify and make it run?

Question

I am making a program that outputs each char green, yellow, or red depending on whether it matches the word. I have tried making a function that takes In the user guess and compares it against the word. I have just given values to each to test it. When I click run nothing happens it just sits there in replit and VS Code.

first if: checks if the word is equal and if it is returns the entire word.

If the entire world is not equal then I try going through each char.

#include <iostream>
#include <algorithm>
#include <cctype>
#include <string>
#include <random>
using namespace std;

string fun2(string user_guess, string word)
{
    int num = 1; //num for loop
    int num1 = 0; // for yellow to stay const
    int num2 = 0; // postion of char
    bool a1 = false;

    if (user_guess == word) {
        cout << "\033[30;42m" << user_guess << "\033[0m\n"; //returns entire word in green
    }
    else {
        while (num <= word.length()) { //Goes through each char in the word
            if (user_guess[num2] == word[num2]) {
                cout << "\033[30;42m" << user_guess[num2] << "\033[0m\n"; // return char in green
                num2++;
                num++;
                num1++;
            }
            else {
                while (num2 <= word.length()) { // checcks wether char is equal to any other char in the word
                    if (user_guess[num] == word[num2]) {
                        a1 = true;
                    }
                }
                if (a1 == true) {
                    cout << "\033[30;103m" << user_guess[num] << "\033[0m\n"; // return yellow
                }
                else {
                    cout << "\033[30;41m" << user_guess[num2] << "\033[0m\n"; // return red
                }
                num2++;
                num++;
                num1++;
            }
        }
    }
    return "Thanks";
}

int main()
{
    string word = "cake";
    string user_guess = "fake";
    cout << fun2(user_guess, word);
}

Answer 1

If I understand what you are doing, you are making things quite a bit harder of yourself than they need to be. You are already using std::string. To find if the current character in user_guess appears elsewhere in word, you can simply use the std::basic_string::find_first_of member function by searching word from the current index for a character that matches the current character in user_guess.

For example, you can simply do:

std::string fun2 (std::string user_guess, std::string word)
{
    if (user_guess == word) {   /* words are equal, all green */
        std::cout << "\033[30;42m" << user_guess << "\033[0m\n";
        return "Success";
    }
    
    /* loop over each char (up to shorter of either string) */
    for (int i = 0; user_guess[i] && word[i]; i++) {
        if (user_guess[i] == word[i]) {   /* chars match, green */
            std::cout << "\033[30;42m" << user_guess[i] << "\033[0m";
        }
        /* current char found elsewhere in word - yellow */
        else if (word.find_first_of (user_guess[i], i) != std::string::npos) {
            std::cout << "\033[30;103m" << user_guess[i] << "\033[0m";
        }
        else {  /* current char does not exist in word - red */
            std::cout << "\033[30;41m" << user_guess[i] << "\033[0m";
        }
    }
    
    return "\nThanks";
}

(note: there is no need for an else after user_guess and word match, you are simply done at that point. Simply return from inside that block rather than using an else and forcing an additional level of indentation for the remainder of the code in the else block)

To match the current character in user_guess to any character in word starting from the beginning of word instead of the current index, you can use word.find_first_of (user_guess[i], 0).

The line using namespace std; was removed. See Why is “using namespace std;” considered bad practice?

Hardcoding strings makes it impossible to change word or user_guess without recompiling your code. You shouldn't have to recompile your code to simply provide a different word or user_guess, that's what the parameters to main(), e.g. int argc, char **argv, are for.

Simply pass word and user_guess as the first two arguments on the command line (or prompt the user for input and read from stdin). Taking the arguments as the first two command line parameters, you could do:

#include <iostream>
#include <string>
...
int main (int argc, char **argv)
{
    if (argc < 3) {
        std::cerr << "usage:  ./prog word user_guess.\n";
        return 1;
    }
    
    std::string word { argv[1] };
    std::string user_guess { argv[2] };
    
    std::cout << fun2(user_guess, word) << '\n';
}

(note: those are the only two headers required by your code. Avoid including superfluous header files)

Example Use/Output

If I understood your goal, using:

$ ./bin/word_game_color cake fake
fake
Thanks

Where fake is red,green,green,green.

If we change it to: ./bin/word_game_color cake feke then the output of feke is red,yellow,green,green.

In case of a match, you have, e.g.

$ ./bin/word_game_color cake cake
cake
Success

Where cake is output all green.

---

Handling user_guess Longer Than word

You likely want to handle cases where user_guess and word are of differing length. In that case simply add an additional loop to loop over any remaining characters in user_guess while searching for the matching character anywhere in word from the beginning.

You can do that with:

std::string fun2 (std::string user_guess, std::string word)
{
    int i = 0;
    
    if (user_guess == word) {   /* words are equal, all green */
        std::cout << "\033[30;42m" << user_guess << "\033[0m\n";
        return "Success";
    }
    
    /* loop over each char (up to shorted of either string) */
    for (; user_guess[i] && word[i]; i++) {
        if (user_guess[i] == word[i]) {   /* chars match, green */
            std::cout << "\033[30;42m" << user_guess[i] << "\033[0m";
        }
        /* current char found elsewhere in word - yellow */
        else if (word.find_first_of (user_guess[i], 0) != std::string::npos) {
            std::cout << "\033[30;103m" << user_guess[i] << "\033[0m";
        }
        else {  /* current char does not exist in word - red */
            std::cout << "\033[30;41m" << user_guess[i] << "\033[0m";
        }
    }
    
    /* user_guess longer than word -- loop remaining chars */
    for (; user_guess[i]; i++) {
        /* current char found elsewhere in word - yellow */
        if (word.find_first_of (user_guess[i], 0) != std::string::npos) {
            std::cout << "\033[30;103m" << user_guess[i] << "\033[0m";
        }
        else {  /* current char does not exist in word - red */
            std::cout << "\033[30;41m" << user_guess[i] << "\033[0m";
        }
    }
    
    return "\nThanks";
}

In that case if you used "cake" for word and "cakebake" for user_guess you would have:

$ ./bin/word_game_color cake cakebake
cakebake
Thanks

Where cakebake is green,green,green,green,red,yellow,yellow,yellow.

Let me know if I misunderstood what your goal was. This made sense given what you had so far -- but greatly simplified things.