Palindrome but with a scentence - c++

Question

So writing a palindrome with pointers and boolean. I have it working with a single word but then I began building it to work with a sentence. The problem is I am unsure how to keep the new modified sentence after making it lowercase and getting rid of the spaces for it to return whether it is or isn't a palindrome. It keeps returning the palindrome as false and when I went to check why I see that the program ignores the modification and kept the original string. I can't use "&" on the parameter as I tested it out. Any hints or takes on what I can do to keep the new modified string?
int main()
{
userInput();
return 0;
}
void userInput()
{
char str[90];
std::cout<<"Please enter a string to check if it is a palindrome: ";
std::cin.getline(str, 90);
modifyString(str);
}
void modifyString(char *string)
{
int count = 0;
for (int i=0; i<strlen(string); i++)
{
putchar(tolower(string[i]));
}
for (int i = 0; string[i]; i++)
{
if (string[i] != ' ')
{
string[count++] = string[i];
}
}
string[count] = '\0';
std::cout<<string<<std::endl;
results(string);
}
bool checkPalindrome(char *string)
{
char *begin;
char *end;
begin = string;
end = (string + strlen(string)-1);
while(begin != end)
{
if ((*begin) == (*end))
{
begin ++;
end--;
}
else
{
return false;
}
}
return true;
}
void results(char *string)
{
bool isItPalindrome;
isItPalindrome = checkPalindrome(string);
if( isItPalindrome == true)
{
std::cout<<"\nCongrats, the string is a palindrome!";
}
else
{
std::cout<<"\nThis string is not a palindrome.";
}
}

Answer 1

For starters this definition of main
int main()
{
userInput();
return 0;
}
does not make a sense. According to the function name main the function should perform the main task that is to output whether the entered sentence is a palindrome or not.
This for loop
for (int i=0; i<strlen(string); i++)
{
putchar(tolower(string[i]));
}
does nothing useful. It just outputs the string in the lower case.
This statement
end = (string + strlen(string)-1);
can invoke undefined behavior if an empty string was passed.
This while loop
while(begin != end)
{
if ((*begin) == (*end))
{
begin ++;
end--;
}
else
{
return false;
}
}
also can invoke undefined behavior for a string containing an even number ofo characters because after this if statement
if ((*begin) == (*end))
{
begin ++;
end--;
}
if the two adjacent characters are equal then begin after incrementing will be greater than end after its decrementing. And as a result the loop will continue its iteration.
In general the approach when the original string is changed is just a bad approach.
Your program has too many functions. It is enough to write one function that will determine whether the passed string is a palindrome or not.
Here is a demonstrative program.
#include <iostream>
#include <cstring>
#include <cctype>
bool checkPalindrome( const char *s )
{
const char *t = s + std::strlen( s );
do
{
while ( s != t && std::isspace( ( unsigned char )*s ) ) ++ s;
while ( s != t && std::isspace( ( unsigned char )*--t ) );
} while ( s != t &&
std::tolower( ( unsigned char )*s ) == tolower( ( unsigned char ) *t ) &&
++s != t );
return s == t;
}
int main()
{
const size_t N = 100;
char s[N] = "";
std::cout << "Please enter a string to check if it is a palindrome: ";
std::cin.getline( s, N );
std::cout << '\n';
if ( checkPalindrome( s ) )
{
std::cout << "Congrats, the string is a palindrome!\n";
}
else
{
std::cout << "This string is not a palindrome.\n";
}
return 0;
}
Its output might look like
Please enter a string to check if it is a palindrome: 1 23 456 6 54 321
Congrats, the string is a palindrome!

Answer 2

Okay, I solved it!
As one of the users on here brought up a point that my lowercase did not modify the string and only prints it out. I try my best to solve the problem and I think I found the solution and everything works perfectly fine. comment back to debug it if you like to see how it looks but what I did was create a for loop again for the lower case but made another pointer with it. here how it looks.
for (char *pt = string; *pt != '\0'; ++pt)
{
*pt = std::tolower(*pt);
++pt;
}
Now that definitely changes the string into a lower case and keeps it as a lower case.
so now the modified function looks like this and ready to take any sentence palindrome you give it. Example: A nUt fOr a jAr of tUNa. We make this all lowercase and take out space and boom palindrome and return true.
void modifyString(char *string)
{
int count = 0;
for (char *pt = string; *pt != '\0'; ++pt)
{
*pt = std::tolower(*pt);
++pt;
}
for (int i = 0; string[i]; i++)
{
if (string[i] != ' ')
{
string[count++] = string[i];
}
}
string[count] = '\0';
//take out the forward slash below to see how it looks after being modified
// std::cout<<std::endl<<string<<std::endl;
results(string);
}