C++ find special char and move to the end of a string - c++

Question

I am currently a student taking C++. My issue is that my nested if statement does not find the special chars if they are at the end of the word. From what I can tell, it does not run the function at all. If anyone has any idea what is wrong that will be great!
#include <iostream>
#include <string>
using namespace std;
bool isVowel(char ch);
string rotate(string pStr);
string pigLatinString(string pStr);
bool specialChar(char ch);
int main() {
string str, str2, pigsentence, finalsentence, orgstr, end;
int counter, length, lengtho;
counter = 1;
cout << "Enter a string: ";
getline (cin, str);
cout << endl;
orgstr = str;
//Add in option to move special chars
string::size_type space;
do {
space = str.find(' ', 0); //Finds the space(s)
if(space != string::npos){
str2 = str.substr(0, space); //Finds the word
if(specialChar(str[true])) { //Finds special char
end = str.substr(space - 1); //Stores special char as end
cout << end << endl; //Testing end
str.erase(space - 1); //Erases special car
}
str.erase(0, space + 1); //Erases the word plus the space
pigsentence = pigLatinString(str2); //converst the word
finalsentence = finalsentence + " " + pigsentence + end; //Adds converted word to final string
}else {
length = str.length();
str2 = str.substr(0, length); //Finds the word
if(specialChar(str[true])) { //Finds special char
end = str.substr(space - 1); //Stores special char as end
cout << end << endl; //Testing end
str.erase(space - 1); //Erases special car
}
str.erase(0, length); //Erases the word
pigsentence = pigLatinString(str2); //converst the word
finalsentence = finalsentence + " " + pigsentence + end; //Adds converted word to final string
counter = 0;
}
}while(counter != 0); //Loops until counter == 0
cout << "The pig Laten form of " << orgstr << " is: " << finalsentence << endl;
return 0;
}
The function that lists the specialChars is below
bool specialChar(char ch) {
switch(ch) {
case ',':
case ':':
case ';':
case '.':
case '?':
case '!':
return true;
default:
return false;
}
}
I do have other functions but they are working and just convert a word to piglatin.

Answer 1

your isSpecialChar takes a character as argument so str[index] would be something you could pass but instead you write str[true] which is not correct. If you want to check if there is a specialChar in your string you need to loop through the whole string and check each character.
It seems as if you want to split up a string into words so you could write something like this
char Seperator = ' ';
std::istringstream StrStream(str);
std::string Token;
std::vector<std::string> tokens;
while(std::getline(StrStream, Token, Seperator))
{
tokens.push_back(Token);
}
now that you have the words in a vector you can do whatever what you want
with them like checking for a special char
for (int i = 0; i < tokens.size(); ++i)
{
std::string& s = tokens[i];
for (int j = 0; j < s.length(); ++j)
{
if ( specialChar( s[j] )
{
...do whatever...
}
}
}

Answer 2

You're using true as your array index when passing arguments to the specialChar() function! Surely that isn't what you meant to do. Fix that and you might see some improvement.
Think of the function call broken down a little, like this, to help you keep track of the types:
// takes a char, returns a bool, so....
bool specialChar( char in )
{ ... }
for( int i = 0; i < str.size(); i++ )
{
char aChar = str[i];
// ...pass in a char, and receive a bool!
bool isSpecial = specialChar(aChar);
if( isSpecial )
{
...
}
}
There's generally no harm in writing the code in a way that makes it clearer to you what's going on, when compiled and optimised it will all likely be the same.