How to get the elements of a tuple - c++

Question

I am creating a scrabble game and i need to have a basic score to words on the dictionary.
I used make_tuple and stored it inside my tuple. Is there a way to access elements in a tuple as if it was in a vector?
#include <iostream>
#include <tuple>
#include <string>
#include <fstream>
void parseTextFile()
{
std::ifstream words_file("scrabble_words.txt"); //File containing the words in the dictionary (english) with words that do not exist
std::ofstream new_words_file("test.txt"); //File where only existing words will be saved
std::string word_input;
std::tuple<std::string, int> tupleList;
unsigned int check_integrity;
int counter = 0;
while(words_file >> word_input)
{
check_integrity = 0;
for (unsigned int i = 0; i < word_input.length(); i++)
{
if((int)word_input[i] >= 97 && (int)word_input[i] <= 123) //if the letter of the word belongs to the alphabet
{
check_integrity++;
}
}
if(word_input.length() == check_integrity)
{
new_words_file << word_input << std::endl; //add the word to the new file
tupleList = std::make_tuple(word_input, getScore(word_input)); //make tuple with the basic score and the word
counter++; //to check if the amount of words in the new file are correct
std::cout << std::get<0>(tupleList) << ": " << std::get<1>(tupleList) << std::endl;
}
}
std::cout << counter << std::endl;
}

Answer 1

One would generally use a tuple when there are more than two values of different types to store. For just two values a pair is a better choice.
In your case what you want to achieve seems to be a list of word-value pairs. You can store them in a container like a vector but you can also store them as key-value pairs in a map. As you can see when following the link, an std::map is literally a collection of std::pair object and tuples are a generalization of pairs.
For completeness, if my understanding of your code purpose is correct, these are additions to your code for storing each tuple in a vector - declarations,
std::tuple<std::string, int> correct_word = {};
std::vector<std::tuple<std::string, int>> existing_words = {};
changes in the loop that saves existing words - here you want to add each word-value tuple to the vector,
if(word_input.length() == check_integrity)
{
// ...
correct_word = std::make_tuple(word_input, getScore(word_input));
existing_words.push_back(correct_word);
// ...
}
..and finally example of usage outside the construction loop:
for (size_t iv=0; iv<existing_words.size(); ++iv)
{
correct_word = existing_words[iv];
std::cout << std::get<0>(correct_word) << ": " << std::get<1>(correct_word) << std::endl;
}
std::cout << counter << std::endl;
The same code with a map would look like:
The only declaration would be a map from strings to values (instead of a tuple and vector of tuples),
std::map<std::string, int> existing_words = {};
In the construction loop you would be creating the map pair in a single line like this,
if(word_input.length() == check_integrity)
{
// ...
existing_words[word_input] = getScore(word_input);
// ...
}
While after constructing you would be accessing map elements using .first for the word and .second for the counter. Below is a printing example that also uses a for auto loop:
for (const auto& correct_word : existing_words)
std::cout << correct_word.first << ": " << correct_word.second << std::endl;
std::cout << counter << std::endl;
Notice that maps are by default alphabetically ordered, you can provide your own ordering rules and also use an unordered map if you don't want any ordering/sorting.