String to an int conversion... gah

[justinc978]

Ok so I have this function Getguess that needs to take a string and convert it into an integer so I can compare it to the computers random guess. I've read up extensively on string stream, atoi etc, but for some reason, I just cannot get it to work correctly. I need to return combo as an integer. I left out my failed attempts at conversion in hopes some one can put me in the right direction.

 int GetGuess ( )
{
	int const CARDS=18;
	std::string deck [CARDS]={"red circle","red square","red triangle","blue circle","blue square",
	 "blue triangle","yellow circle","yellow square","yellow triangle","orange circle",
	 "orange square" ,"orange triangle","purple circle","purple square",
     "purple triangle","green circle","green square","green triangle"};
     
     
	int answer=0;
	int i;

	
	std::string color, shape,combo;

	cout<<"Please choose a card with a color first, and then a shape.";
	cin>>color>>shape;
	combo= color + " " +shape;
	
 for (int i=0;i<CARDS;i++)
    {
        if (combo==*(deck+i))
        {
            combo=i;
            break;
        }
    }
    return (combo);
}

[shadowCODE]

What do you actually want to return? The index of the combo in the deck?

[giblit]

So..In other words you are trying to find the index of the card?

What you should do is instead of combo = i on line 24 is assign i to a new variable that you declare before the loop like.

int index = 0;
for(...)
{
     ...

     index = i;
}

or alternatively you could just use a map and map the cards to numbers.

Though if you wanted to do combo = i. You would need to do something along the lines of

std::stringstream ss;
ss << i;
ss >> combo;

or

std::ostringstream ss;
ss << i;
combo = ss.str();

If you do it that way don't forget to #include <sstream>

Edit: btw you are using pointer notation with your arrays (it works fine though if that's what you prefer), the standard array notation is array[index] instead of *(array + index) though you can do index[array] or *(index + array) too if you wish.

[justinc978]

I basically need to convert the cards to numbers after the user has selected them, the program is a game where the user will select 5 cards, and then check them against the computers guesses (by seeding random numbers, 1 to 18). The pointer notation is actually a requirement for this assignment, I'm unable to use an array name inside the code other than to declare the array. I have to point to it, which has been a royal pain.


Do you guys think mapping would be the best way, rather than how I'm trying to do the conversion here? I think I'm alot more prone to errors doing it the way I am after actually thinking about it.

This is the function idea:

GetGuess prompts the player to guess a card. The player enters a shape and a color. This function converts this input combination to an integer that represents that card, and returns that integer.

Thanks for the help guess, its much appreciated.