Compare char with char[i] not working in hangman game - c++

Question

I was trying to do a hangman game, my idea was that you give the number of letters and the word, then the program fills a char with _ as letters the word has. Then it asks you a letter and it compares if the letter matches any letter in the word given. Then it replaces the respective _ with the letter, but it doesn't replace it...
What am I doing wrong?
#include <iostream>
#include <conio.h>
#include <cstdlib>
using namespace std;
int main()
{
int game = 0;
int n = 0;
char blank[n - 1];
char palabra[n - 1];
char letra;
cout << "Input the number of letters of the word\n";
cin >> n;
cout << "Input the word\n";
cin >> palabra;
for (int i = 0; i < n; i++) {
blank[i] = '_';
}
while (game != 1) {
for (int i = 0; i < n; i++) {
if (letra == palabra[i]) {
blank[i] = letra;
}
else {
if (blank[i] != '_') {
blank[i] = blank[i];
}
else {
blank[i] = '_';
}
}
}
system("cls");
cout << "\n";
for (int i = 0; i < n; i++) {
cout << blank[i] << " ";
}
cout << "Input a letter" << endl;
cin >> letra;
}
getch();
return 0;
}

Answer 1

int n = 0;
char blank[n - 1];
There are three things wrong with this:
The n is initialized to 0, but then the array will have 0 - 1 length.
The value of n isn't really known until it is input by the user, but you went ahead and declared blank with n-1 entries.
Even if n were initialized to something reasonable, the declaration of
char blank[n - 1];
is not legal C++ syntax. Arrays in C++ must have their size denoted by a compile-time constant, not a runtime variable.
To get rid of these issues, use std::string instead of char arrays.
If you did that, the code would look similar to this:
#include <string>
#include <iostream>
int main()
{
int game = 0;
int n = 0;
std::string palabra;
char letra;
std::cout << "Input the number of letters of the word\n";
std::cin >> n;
std::cout << "Input the word\n";
std::cin >> palabra;
std::string blank(n, '_'); // create a string with n underscores
//...
}
The rest of the code should stay the same. Whether the overall logic of the program is correct, that would be another issue, but at least you do not have the issue with the character arrays.