Returning Strings?

[AphexBravia]

Hi,

Writing a very basic function that checks a password is correct, no checks for username of anything. Program works I just cant get the return message "Access granted!" printed..?

#include <iostream>
#include <string>

using namespace std;

string check_pass(string username, string password);

int main(){
	string username;
	string password;
	
	cout<<"Please enter your username: ";
	cin>>username;
	cout<<"Please enter your password: ";
	cin>>password;
	check_pass(username, password);
}

string check_pass(string username, string password){
	for (int i=3; i>=0; i--){
		if (password!="Programming"){
			cout<<"Incorrect, access denied. "<<i<<" chances left"<<endl<<endl;
			cout<<"Please enter your username: ";
			cin>>username;
			cout<<"Please enter your password: ";
			cin>>password;
		}
		if (password=="Programming"){
			return "Access granted!";
		}
		if (i==1){
			cout<<"Too many incorrect login attemps.";
			exit(0);
		}
	}
	return "Access granted!";
}

Thanks for any help

[KurtJD]

Add a cout << before check_pass, like so:

cout << check_pass(username, password);

[AphexBravia]

Thanks man, that actually does make so much sense I cant believe how stupid I am..

[Thumper]

Although, OP, keep in mind that that might not be the best approach to your problem. When creating functions that gives error feedback you should use bools or ints.
Consider the following:

bool check_pass(string username, string password)
{
    //some logic
    if(pass) return true;
    return false;
}

int main()
{
    if(check_pass(username, password))
        cout << "Access granted!" << endl;
    else
        cout << "Access denied!" << endl;
}

That is a much more intuitive approach because you would be able to do other things with the results from check_pass. Perhaps you don't just want to output the results as a string, but you want to check the result to see if it's a pass and then activate some other procedure. If you return a string "Access granted!" from the check function, you would have to do this to check if the username/pass worked

int main()
{
    if(check_pass(username, password) == "Access granted!")
        //do something
    else
        //do something else.
}

It creates a lot more for you to write if, say, you had to use check_pass a lot more times in your code.

[AphexBravia]

Ok, Thanks Thumper I can see what you are saying. So change the function to a bool, change the return messages to either true or false and add a if statement in main? Ill try this now and let ya know how I go sounds pretty straight forward.

[AphexBravia]

Cheers Thumper, works perfectly and looks much better, what you said makes perfect sense. Thanks for your help :)

[Thumper]

Cheers, glad I could help. :)