Question

I have a question regarding C++. This is my current function:

string clarifyWord(string str) {
    //Remove all spaces before string
    unsigned long i = 0;
    int currentASCII = 0;

    while (i < str.length()) {
        currentASCII = int(str[i]);
        if (currentASCII == 32) {
            str.erase(i);
            i++;
            continue;
        } else {
            break;
        }
    }

    //Remove all spaces after string
    i = str.length();
    while (i > -1) {
        currentASCII = int(str[i]);
        if (currentASCII == 32) {
            str.erase(i);
            i--;
            continue;
        } else {
            break;
        }
    }
    return str;
}

Just to get the basic and obvious things out of the way, I have #include <string> and using namespace std; so I do have access to the string functions.

The thing is though that the loop is quitting and sometimes skipping the second loop. I am passing in the str to be " Cheese " and it should remove all the spaces before the string and after the string.

In the main function, I am also assigning a variable to clarifyWord(str) where str is above. It doesn’t seem to print that out either using cout << str;.

Is there something I am missing with printing out strings or looping with strings? Also ASCII code 32 is Space.

Answer 1

Okay so the erase function you are calling looks like this:

string& erase ( size_t pos = 0, size_t n = npos );

The n parameter is the number of items to delete. The npos means, delete everything up until the end of the string, so set the second parameter to 1.

str.erase(i,1)

[EDIT]

You could change the first loop to this:

while (str.length() > 0 && str[0] == ' ')
{
   str.erase(0,1);
}

and the second loop to this:

while (str.length() > 0 && str[str.length() - 1] == ' ')
{
   str.erase(str.length() - 1, 1);
}