'I am trying to use strings inside an array and then splitting that string into its characters

Consider:

std::string words[Maxword] = { "Hello", "World", "Shift", "Green" , "Seven" };
srand(time(NULL));
int iSecret = rand() % 4 + 1;
std::cout << words[iSecret];

I have this code which has an array with words in it. Then it picks a random number and that correlates to a word. How then would I split that word into the letters?

Similar to world, it would be later compared to a letter that the user would guess.

c++


Solution 1:[1]

Note sure what you are asking but you can do this to access a character in a string

 std::string s = "Word";
 std::cout << s[1]; // == 'o'

you can loop

 for(int i = 0; i << s.length(); i++){
      std::cout << s[i];
 }

Solution 2:[2]

for(char c : words[iSecret])
   cout<<"\t"<< c;

Solution 3:[3]

You have a couple of options. Both can be handled in the same manner. With your array of std::string, to split the selected word into characters (in a manner where you can provide a second random index and retrieve that character), you could do:

  std::cout << words[iSecret] << "\n\n";

  for (size_t i = 0; i < words[iSecret].length(); i++) {
    std::cout << "words[iSecret][" << i << "]:  '" <<
                (char)words[iSecret][i] << "'\n";
  }

Above, since words[iSecret] is type std::string, you can use the [ ] index operator to select any character at a valid index within words[iSecret]. For all ways of accessing individual characters, you can see std::basic_string.

If you did not need individual character access by index and simply wanted to loop over each character, you could use a range-based for loop, e.g.

  for (const auto& c : words[iSecret])
    std::cout << (char)c << '\n';

Example Use/Output

Where running the program with the index operator [ ] for access as shown above, it would produce:

$ ./bin/splitwords-char
Green

words[iSecret][0]:  'G'
words[iSecret][1]:  'r'
words[iSecret][2]:  'e'
words[iSecret][3]:  'e'
words[iSecret][4]:  'n'

or

$ ./bin/splitwords-char
Seven

words[iSecret][0]:  'S'
words[iSecret][1]:  'e'
words[iSecret][2]:  'v'
words[iSecret][3]:  'e'
words[iSecret][4]:  'n'

std::vector As Alternative to array-of-std::string

If you have control over the type for words, then making it std::vector<std::string> words {...} avoids the inflexible limitation of the array-of-std::string. How you access each character would be exactly the same. Whether an element of std::vector<> or an element of the array, the type of the object you are dealing with is still std::string.

In addition to the index operator [ ], you can also use the member function .at() (e.g. words[iSecret].at(i) with the benefit that .at(i) also provides bounds checking on the index provided. See std::basic_string::at

Precedence Problem

You have an error in your use of rand(). % (modulo) has a higher precedence than +, so you never access "Hello" (you only access elements 1 to 4). See C++ Operator Precedence. To correct the problem either enclose (4 + 1) in parenthesis, or simply use rand() % Maxword. That way the values will range from 0 to 4 allowing access to all indexes in words[].

Sources

This article follows the attribution requirements of Stack Overflow and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Source: Stack Overflow

Solution Source
Solution 1 pm100
Solution 2 Owais Yosuf
Solution 3 Peter Mortensen

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