On finding vowels and capitals char in the beginning of a string? - c++

Question

I've been making a little memory game as an exercise from a textbook I'm doing. It's called Grandma's trunk and it works by in one turn you found an item in the trunk and the next turn you say you found the previous item and the newest item on this turn...I think.
Mostly it's an exercise on using functions, which I think I've gotten down pretty well. But my output is completely wrong. I've believe I've located the problem in one function where I'm supposed to analyze the first character and decided if it needs an AN or A or THE before the string. There might be a problem with the random function I'm using to throw in predefined items from a small database. The int main() function is supposed to be relatively complete, this is just an exercise to master functions...which I, sorta? Would rather call it novice experience.
I thought that perhaps I was running into the getline bug where it couts a blank line, and from my understanding, is fixed by cin.ignore(); but all that did was force me to press enter twice when I enter data. Which...I sort of like. Perhaps I'm using gizmos like isupper and .at() wrong? I tried using find_first_of but it didn't really change anything.
output calling the storage trunk and the owner grandma and just using word1 word2 word3... wordn....as items found leaves me with the output.
In grandma trunk you've found a
and an ord3 word1.
it completely muddles up the output. I'm starting to think that the int main() body I was given wasn't exactly stellar. But I can't be 100% confident in my article function. Any help would just be incredible. I've been struggling using this among many books and advice from a buddy to teach myself a little about programming. It's been a rather huge headache.
program itself
#include <iostream>
#include <string>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <time.h>
#include <ctype.h>
using namespace std;
string CorrectArticle(string phrase);
string GetPhrase(void);
bool Continue(void);
string UpperCase(string);
string RandomItem(void);
const string PUNCTUATION = ".";
int main(){
//Variables
int turn;
bool flag;
string phrase,
article,
story, item,
storage, owner;
srand(time(NULL));
cout << "Welcome to Grandmother's Trunk 9000" << endl;
cout << "This is a memory game. Each turn a player" << endl;
cout << "Says an item to place inside a trunk. " << endl;
cout << "And the next player has to say what the " << endl;
cout << "previous player said plus his/her own item." << endl;
cout << "This will go around in revolving turns." << endl;
cout << endl << endl;
cout << "But Grandma's Trunk is a little dry..." << endl;
cout << "Let's change what the storage is and " << endl;
cout << "Who owns it." << endl << endl;
//define storage variable
cout << "What exactly is this storage?" << endl;
getline (cin, storage);
cout << "So the items are stored in " << storage << endl;
cout << endl;
//define owner
cout << "Who owns this " << storage << " ?" << endl;
getline (cin, owner);
cout << "The owner is " << owner << endl;
story = "In "+ owner + " " + storage + " you've found ";
turn = 0;
flag = Continue();
//While flag is true
while (flag) {
if (turn %2 == 0) {
item = GetPhrase();
} else {
item = RandomItem();
}
//set corrected item to article
article = CorrectArticle(item);
//advance the story every item
story = story + "\n and " + article + " " + item;
cout << story << PUNCTUATION << endl;
turn++;
flag = Continue();
}
return (0);
}
//Gives A, AN, and THE to correct words
// An if phrase starts with i,e,i,o,u or y
// A if phrase starts with other lower case letters
// The for phrases that start with an uppercase letter
string CorrectArticle(string phrase){
int i=0;
string correctedString;
string stringAn;
string stringA;
string stringThe;
stringAn= " an ";
stringA = " a ";
stringThe= "The ";
if (GetPhrase().at(i) = "a" or "e" or "i" or "u"){
correctedString = stringAn + GetPhrase();
}else if (isupper(GetPhrase().at(i))){
correctedString = stringThe + GetPhrase();
}else{
correctedString = stringA + GetPhrase();
}
return correctedString;
}
//This function takes no parameters
//and returns the user's input
string GetPhrase(void){
string itemInput;
cout << "\nWhat did you find? \n" << endl;
getline (cin, itemInput);
cout << "\nYou found " << itemInput << endl;
cin.ignore();
return itemInput;
}
//Asks user if they wish to continue
bool Continue(void){
//return false if no, true if yes
string continueString;
cout << "Would you like to continue?";
cout << " Yes or No would suffice" << endl;
getline(cin,continueString);
UpperCase(continueString);
cout << "You picked " << continueString;
if (UpperCase(continueString).find("NO") != string::npos){
return false;
} else if (UpperCase(continueString).find("YES") != string::npos){
return true;
}
}
//Changes the string to uppercase
string UpperCase(string stringUpper){
int i = 0;
while (i<stringUpper.size()){
stringUpper[i] = toupper(stringUpper[i]);
i++;
}
return stringUpper;
}
//Randomizes items found in game
string RandomItem(void){
int randomNumber;
int maxNumberOfItems = 5;
string randomizedItem;
randomNumber= rand() % maxNumberOfItems;
switch (randomNumber){
case 0:
randomizedItem = "Smaug";
break;
case 1:
randomizedItem = "Batman";
break;
case 2:
randomizedItem = "Yoda";
break;
case 3:
randomizedItem = "Paul Atreides";
break;
case 4:
randomizedItem = "Captain Kirk";
break;
default:
cout << "ERRORRRR! PANIC!" << endl;
}
return randomizedItem;
}

Answer 1

Remember that = is assignment, == for compare.
Also remember that you have to compare variable with value, such as:
if ((string == "a") or (string == "e") ...
If the or works for you, all the best. I've only been able to use ||. Must be compiler conformity issues.
Try this:
bool is_vowel(char letter)
{
const std::string vowels("aeiouAEIOU");
return (vowels.find_first(letter) != std::string::npos);
}
In other words, I place all the vowels in a string a search the string. If there is a match, the letter is a vowel.