makeValidWord(std::string word) not working properly - c++

Question

I'm programming a hash table thing in C++, but this specific piece of code will not run properly. It should return a string of alpha characters and ' and -, but I get cases like "t" instead of "art" when I try to input "'aRT-*".
isWordChar() return a bool value depending on whether the input is a valid word character or not using isAlpha()
// Words cannot contain any digits, or special characters EXCEPT for
// hyphens (-) and apostrophes (') that occur in the middle of a
// valid word (the first and last characters of a word must be an alpha
// character). All upper case characters in the word should be convertd
// to lower case.
// For example, "can't" and "good-hearted" are considered valid words.
// "12mOnkEYs-$" will be converted to "monkeys".
// "Pa55ive" will be stripped "paive".
std::string WordCount::makeValidWord(std::string word) {
if (word.size() == 0) {
return word;
}
string r = "";
string in = "";
size_t incr = 0;
size_t decr = word.size() - 1;
while (incr < word.size() && !isWordChar(word.at(incr))) {
incr++;
}
while (0 < decr && !isWordChar(word.at(decr))) {
decr--;
}
if (incr > decr) {
return r;
}
while (incr <= decr) {
if (isWordChar(word.at(incr)) || word.at(incr) == '-' || word.at(incr) == '\'') {
in =+ word.at(incr);
}
incr++;
}
for (size_t i = 0; i < in.size(); i++) {
r += tolower(in.at(i));
}
return r;
}

Answer 1

Assuming you can use standard algorithms its better to rewrite your function using them. This achieves 2 goals:
code is more readable, since using algorithms shows intent along with code itself
there is less chance to make error
So it should be something like this:
std::string WordCount::makeValidWord(std::string word) {
auto first = std::find_if(word.cbegin(), word.cend(), isWordChar);
auto last = std::find_if(word.crbegin(), word.crend(), isWordChar);
std::string i;
std::copy_if(first, std::next(last), std::back_inserter(i), [](char c) {
return isWordChar(c) || c == '-' || c == '\'';
});
std::string r;
std::transform(i.cbegin(), i.cend(), std::back_inserter(r), std::tolower);
return r;
}

Answer 2

I am going to echo #Someprogrammerdude and say: Learn to use a debugger!
I pasted your code into Visual Studio (changed isWordChar() to isalpha()), and stepped it through with the debugger. Then it was pretty trivial to notice this happening:
First loop of while (incr <= decr) {:
Second loop:
Ooh, look at that; the variable in does not update correctly - instead of collecting a string of the correct characters it only holds the last one. How can that be?
in =+ word.at(incr); Hey, that is not right, that operator should be +=.
Many errors are that easy and effortless to find and correct if you use a debugger. Pick one up today. :)