Beginner C++ Voting Program using const literal - c++

Question

This program I came across on another forum is a voting program, someone was having issues with compiling. Any answer that was given didn't really match up with what the programmer wanted. So I am here to get some effective answers after attempting to edit the code myself.
The current issue I am having is when I input the variable, it still runs an infinite loop. What am I not doing properly for the design to perform, until I input 5 votes?
#include <iostream>
using namespace std;
const int ev = 5; //max. # of votes
int votesA = 0, votesB = 0, votesC = 0, spoiltvotes = 0; //total votes already initialized globally
int vote; //input variable
int main()
{
//loop over the voting stations
int i;
for(i = 0; i <= ev; i++)
{
//loop over the votes
cout << "Enter your vote: \t";
cin >> vote;
while(vote <= 5)
{
switch(vote)
{
case 1: votesA++;
break;
case 2: votesB++;
break;
case 3: votesC++;
break;
default: spoiltvotes++;
}
}
}
//display results neatly
cout << "# of votes for candidate A: \t" << votesA;
cout << "\n # of votes for candidate B: \t" << votesB;
cout << "\n # of votes for candidate C: \t" << votesC;
cout << "\n # of spoilt votes: \t" << spoiltvotes;
return 0;
}
Updated Result: I have fixed the infinite loop but for some reason the loop is still iterating 6 times instead of 5, giving me large tallies of numbers instead of single-digits.
#include <iostream>
using namespace std;
int main()
{
const int ENDvote = 5; //max. # of votes
//loop over the voting stations
int vote;
int spoiltvotes;
for(vote = 0; vote >= ENDvote; vote++)
cout << "1. Candidate A\t 2. Candidate B\t 3. Candidate C" << endl;
{
//loop over the votes
cout << "Enter your vote: \t";
cin >> vote;
switch(vote)
{
case 1:
cout << "# of votes for candidate A:\t" << vote;
break;
case 2:
cout << "# of votes for candidate B:\t" << vote;
break;
case 3:
cout << "# of votes for candidate C:\t" << vote;
break;
default:
cout << "# of spoilt votes:\t" << spoiltvotes;
break;
}
}
return 0;
}

Answer 1

There is an obvious issue to your code.
When you enter your for loop : ‘for(i = 0; i <= ev; i++)’ you get to the ‘cin>>vote;’ When you get the vote if ‘vote<=5’ the loop with go on forever due to the while loop. Once you enter the while loop VOTE NEVER CHANGES. So, if the while loop condition is fulfilled, it will always be true since(again) vote doesn’t change.
Fred Larson said what I am saying essentially.
I am new to stack overflow so anything you think I should be doing, please tell me.

Answer 2

Others have already commented on what's the problem with your program, the while loop would never break since vote is never getting updated and if the input value in vote is <=5, it shall remain to be so and end up being an infinite while loop.
A while loop within a for loop is usually not something you'd want and should look hard at the code and see if that's what you really want. If not, refactor it out to stick with either one of them, not both.
Your problem appears to be in a similar vein. From your program, it seems that you want to read in the votes polled at the 5 voting stations and then count the number of votes that each candidate received (or went waste).
If you go the for loop route, you just need to iterate over the loop, read in the number of votes (alongwith input validations), do the switch case and then move on to the next iteration of the for loop.
If you go the while loop route, then just have a while loop to read in five votes, something like
while(std::cin>>vote) {
switch(...
and do pretty much the same stuff.
Also, global variables are (again) usually a bad idea, especially if they are non-const. Move them into your main().
Also, do take care that a break statement only breaks the inner-most loop. So, doing something like
while(true) {
int x = 1;
switch(x) {
case 1:
break;
}
}
will not break the while loop,.