??? I don't know how to say what's going on

[chellebell1689]

So I wrote the program below as an assignment. It asks the user to enter a sentence and the program will tell them how many vowels, how many words, and how many characters. When I compile it, there's no errors, but when I run it and enter a sentence...I don't know how to explain what happens. It seems like it just keeps printing my stat lines...

I feel like it has something to do with the loop that checks for the end of the line. I tried "NULL" and "\n"; NULL makes it just sit there while \n makes it do what it does now. I got the \n from the debugger, it showed that was at the end of the sentence.

Please and Thank You for your help!!

  #include<iostream>
#include<cstdlib>
#include<cctype>
#include<iomanip>

using namespace std;

//declare user functions
int isvowel (char letter);

int main()
{	
	//set variables
	const char SENTINEL = '~';

	char letter;	
	
	int word_count = 0;
	int vowel_count = 0;
	int char_count = 0;

	double mod_count = 0;
	
	//request sentence
	cout<<fixed<<showpoint;
	cout<<"Please enter a sentence or enter ~ to end the program"<<endl;
	cin.get(letter);
	
		
	//loop until end char
	while (letter != SENTINEL)
	{
		//loop until the end of the sentence		        
		while (letter != '\n')
 		{
 			char_count += 1;
    		
    		if (letter == ' ' || '.')
    		{
    			word_count += 1;
    		}
			
			//call on user defined function
			isvowel(letter);
			
			cin.get(letter);
		}
				
		//display totals
		cout<<"\n\nTotal number of vowels in your sentence: "<<setw(48)<<right<<vowel_count;
		cout<<"\nTotal number of words in your sentence: "<<setw(45)<<right<<word_count;
		cout<<"\nTotal number of characters in your sentence: "<<setw(50)<<right<<char_count;
		cout<<"\n\t(inluding spaces & punctuation)"<<endl;
	}
		
	//end program
	cout<<endl<<endl;
	system("pause");
	return 0;
  }

  //setup user functions
  int isvowel (char letter)
  {
	int vowel_count = 0;
	
	switch (letter)
	{
		case 'A':
		case 'a':
			vowel_count += 1;
			break;
			
		case 'E':
		case 'e':
			vowel_count += 1;
			break;
			
		case 'I':
		case 'i':
			vowel_count += 1;
			break;
			
		case 'O':
		case 'o':
			vowel_count += 1;
			break;
			
		case 'U':
		case 'u':
			vowel_count += 1;
			break;
			
		default:
			vowel_count +=0;
			break;
	}
	
	return vowel_count;
  }

[2LzbRXSz]

First, you should store input in a string not a char. That way you can grab the full sentence. Use getline(cin, letter); now that it's a string.

Your loops are a little off. You have the right mindset - you were close, it just needed some reformatting:)
Here's what it should look like:

//loop until end char
    for (int i = 0; i < letter.length(); i++)
    {
        char_count += 1;
    
        if (letter[i] == SENTINEL)
        {
            exit(0);
        }
            
        if (letter[i] == ' ' || '.')
        {
            word_count += 1;
        }
        
        //call on user defined function
        isvowel(letter[i]);
    }

You need to use a for loop, that way you have a counter. It will increase until < the length of the string. You use this counter (int i) to loop through your string and examine each character.

Other than those things, I'm pretty sure everything was fine. I didn't keep the best track of what I changed though, so just in case that isn't it - here is what the code should look like once it's said and done.

#include<iostream>
#include<cstdlib>
#include<cctype>
#include<iomanip>

using namespace std;

//declare user functions
int isvowel (char letter);

int main()
{
    //set variables
    const char SENTINEL = '~';
    
    string letter;
    
    int word_count = 0;
    int vowel_count = 0;
    int char_count = 0;
    
    double mod_count = 0;
    
    //request sentence
    cout<<fixed<<showpoint;
    cout<<"Please enter a sentence or enter ~ to end the program"<<endl;
    getline(cin, letter);
    
    
    //loop until end char
    for (int i = 0; i < letter.length(); i++)
    {
        char_count += 1;
    
        if (letter[i] == SENTINEL)
        {
            exit(0);
        }
            
        if (letter[i] == ' ' || '.')
        {
            word_count += 1;
        }
        
        //call on user defined function
        isvowel(letter[i]);
    }
        
        //display totals
        cout<<"\n\nTotal number of vowels in your sentence: "<<setw(48)<<right<<vowel_count;
        cout<<"\nTotal number of words in your sentence: "<<setw(45)<<right<<word_count;
        cout<<"\nTotal number of characters in your sentence: "<<setw(50)<<right<<char_count;
        cout<<"\n\t(inluding spaces & punctuation)"<<endl;
    
    //end program
    return 0;
}

//setup user functions
int isvowel (char letter)
{
    int vowel_count = 0;
    
    switch (letter)
    {
        case 'A':
        case 'a':
            vowel_count += 1;
            break;
            
        case 'E':
        case 'e':
            vowel_count += 1;
            break;
            
        case 'I':
        case 'i':
            vowel_count += 1;
            break;
            
        case 'O':
        case 'o':
            vowel_count += 1;
            break;
            
        case 'U':
        case 'u':
            vowel_count += 1;
            break;
            
        default:
            vowel_count +=0;
            break;
    }
    
    return vowel_count;
}

If there's anything else you're confused about, let me know:)

Edit: I almost forgot!

 if (letter[i] == SENTINEL)
        {
            exit(0);
        }

calls exit(0); to exit the program - the 0 is to state that the program exited without error.

Edit 2: I also removed

cout<<endl<<endl;
system("pause");

cout<<endl<<endl; is incorrect - the correct way to do it is cout << endl;

I removed system("pause"); because system functions aren't recommended + I'm on a Mac so it doesn't work for me (feel free to put it back if you want to - I know some compilers just close if you don't put it there. However, if you need to pause your program in the future for some other reason, I recommend using http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/thread/this_thread/sleep_for/ )

Edit 3: I am very tired so please excuse any grammatically incorrect sentences I know I shouldn't be posting if I'm tired, but ironically exhaustion doesn't affect my programming knowledge - only my ability to speak proper English! Haha.

[chellebell1689]

Thank you so much for your help! The reason I had the double endl is because I wanted it to skip a couple line before displaying the pause. And my teacher wants us to use the system("pause"), but thank you for the link! This works so much better!!

Edit:
Ok so I compiled and tried running and it tells me "letter" and "i" were not delcared in this scope. This is in my isVowel function and the switch.

[2LzbRXSz]

No problem!

Hmm, I just ran it again and I'm not getting that error. Did you add anything new to your isvowel function since I edited it?

[chellebell1689]

I tried putting "[i]" after each instance of [letter] because it's not counting my vowels.

Also, for some reason it's counting each letter as a word.

**lol on edit 3, I'm the same!**

Edit:
So I figured out part of the problem on my vowel count. It keeps resetting back to zero. So I decided to define that in the main func instead. I have found that somewhere, some how after the end of my vowel function, it is reset to zero. I tried adding "vowel_count = vowel_count" in my loop, but that does nothing.

[2LzbRXSz]

Your function doesn't need to loop through a string and check each character because letter[i] == char (letter[i] is a single character in a string).

vowel count resets to 0 because it's called in the for loop, so each time the function is called, it resets (because of vowel count = 0).

I'm posting from my phone right now, but I'm about to get on my computer. I'll play around with the code and post what I come up with! :)

[2LzbRXSz]

I left your function alone since the last time I edited, but I changed the call to the function.

Rather than isvowel(letter[i]);, I changed it to vowel_count += isvowel(letter[i]); (you had a vowel_count variable declared, but I don't think you were adding the number of vowels to it, which is why it was showing up as 0).

Edit: I've noticed a new problem - word_count is printing the same value as char_count.

Edit 2: I've found the error!
if (letter[i] == ' ' || '.') is invalid.
It should be
if (letter[i] == ' ' || letter[i] == '.')
if you don't tell it to check letter[i] == '.' it won't assume to based on the || operator. || allows you to add another condition, but it has to be a full condition:)

Now - I think everything should be working great. If there's anything else you need help with or anything your confused about I'm more than happy to help!

[chellebell1689]

Thank you!! Works great!!

[2LzbRXSz]

No problem:)