Question

I have been stuck on this program all day. I finally feel like I’m getting really close. I have to find the number of vowels and characters in a string. Then output them at the end. However, when I compile my program crashes. I have checked syntax and looked in my book all day. If anyone can help I would really appreciate it! because I have 5 more similar functions to write that manipulate c-strings. Thanks!

#include <iostream>
#include <string>
using namespace std;

int specialCounter(char *, int &);


int main()
{

const int SIZE = 51;        //Array size
char userString[SIZE];      // To hold the string
char letter;
int numCons;



// Get the user's input string
cout << "First, Please enter a string (up to 50 characters): " << endl;
cin.getline(userString, SIZE);





// Display output
cout << "The number of vowels found is " << specialCounter(userString, numCons) <<      "." << endl;
cout << "The number of consonants found is " << numCons << "." << endl;


}



int specialCounter(char *strPtr, int &cons)
{
int vowels = 0;
cons = 0;


while (*strPtr != '/0')
{
    if (*strPtr == 'a' || 'A' || 'e' || 'E' || 'i' || 'I' || 'o' || 'O' || 'u' || 'U')
    {
        vowels++;       // if vowel is found, increment vowel counter
                    // go to the next character in the string
    }
    else
    {
        cons++;         // if consonant is found, increment consonant counter
                    // go to the next character in the string
    }

    strPtr++;

}
return vowels;

}

Answer 1

I’m going to assume you’re limited to not using std::string or std::getline and that you have to assume the user inputs something less than 51 characters.

Your crash stems from:

while (*strPtr != '/0')

A null character is an escape code. '/0' is a multicharacter literal with an implementation-defined value. That means it’s probably always true. Change it to:

while (*strPtr != '\0') //or while (strPtr)

Apart from that, you have a logic error with your vowel check. You have to check it against each vowel, like this:

if (*strPtr == 'a' || *strPtr == 'e') //etc.

You’ll find it easier if you compare against the toupper or tolower version of each character to reduce the number of comparisons by a factor of 2.