Question

I have a string containing either “0123456789 ?”. I would like to

- if first char is not ' ' or '?' and the rest is " ", return the first char
- if last char is not ' ' or '?' and the rest is " ", return the last char
- if the string is only " ", return -1
- and else, return -2

I found several solutions but none of them satisfy me in term of speed and nice coding.
Could someone that think of a nice and elegant solution, share it to me ?!

Thank You

Answer 1

what about this?

stringtest(string &s)
{
    if(string.length()<1)
    return -2
    std::string begin(' ?');
    if(begin.find(s.front())>1)
    //test if first character of s is in begin
    {
        unsigned found = s.find_first_not_of(' ',1)
        //checks if there are any other char then ' ' after the first char
        if(found >s.length())
        return s.at(0);
    }
    else if(begin.find(s.back())>1)
    //test if last character of s is in begin
    {
        unsigned found = s.find_last_not_of(' ',s.length()-1);
        //checks if there are any other char then ' ' before the last char
        if(found !=std::string::npos)
        return s.at(s.length()-1);
    }
    if(s.length()==1 && s.front()== ' ')
    return -1
    else return -2
}