Searching a vector of object pointers - c++

Question

I have a Player class where each object of the type Class has a name, wins, losses, and draws. Each object of the Player class is created by calling the_player = new Player(the_name). When the user inputs a new name to add a Player object to the program a pointer is pushed into a vector AllPlayers. The program should check before pushing the new pointer that the desired player does not already exist in said vector. I have to do this check several times throughout my program so I thought I'd write a function for it. Here is my function:
int findPlayer(vector<Player*> &vals, string name_in)
{
for (int i = 0; i < vals.size(); i++){
if (vals[i]->getName() == name_in){
cout << vals[i]->toString() << endl;
return i;
}
else
return -1;
}
};
When the option is requested to add a new Player the following code is used:
do {
cout << "Name: ";
cin >> the_name;
if (findPlayer(AllPlayers, the_name) != -1){
cerr << "Player already exists\n";
}
} while (findPlayer(AllPlayers, the_name) != -1);
the_player = new Player(the_name);
AllPlayers.push_back(the_player);
For some reason, though, every time I try to add a new player it throws "Player already exists" and never leaves the do-while loop. This is even true when the AllPlayers vector is empty. I added a cout << findPlayer(AllPlayers, the_name) for debugging and it printed 4192252 which I assume is the largest element possible in a vector.
So the question is: Why does it return 4192252 rather than -1?

Answer 1

If vals is empty then the for loop is never entered and the function exits without hitting a return statement. Meaning that you get a random value returned instead, in this case 4192252 happens to be in the return register. Your compiler warnings will have told you this if you read them.

Answer 2

What you think, what will be returned from findPlayer if vals is empty?
Is it defined?

Answer 3

If the vector is empty, you don't enter the loop at all, so don't reach a return statement and don't return a valid value. You should enable compiler warnings to catch this error.
Otherwise, you only check the first item, and return immediately whether or not it matched. You want to return if you find a match, but keep looking otherwise, and only return -1 if there is no match:
for (int i = 0; i < vals.size(); i++){
if (vals[i]->getName() == name_in){
cout << vals[i]->toString() << endl;
return i;
}
}
return -1;

Answer 4

The find player function should be something like:
int findPlayer(vector<Player*> &vals, string name_in)
{
if(vals.size() == 0)
return -1;
for (int i = 0; i < vals.size(); i++){
if (vals[i]->getName() == name_in){
cout << vals[i]->toString() << endl;
return i;
}
}
return -1;
};

Answer 5

Rewrite the function the following way
bool findPlayer( const std::vector<Player*> &vals, const std::string &name_in )
{
std::vector<Player*>::size_tyoe i = 0;
while ( i < vals.size() && vals[i]->getName() != name_in ) ++i;
return i != vals.size();
}
Take into account that member function getName has to be defined with qualifier const.
As for your function then it returns nothing in case when the vector is empty or returns -1 in case when the first element of the vector does not coincide with the string.
Take into account that there is standard algorithm std::find_if declared in header <algorithm> that can be used instead of your function.