Question

I was trying to implement a solution for palindrome, I think my logic is correct, but my program gets stuck in an infinite loop and I get an error message of “Prep.exe has stopped working”

int main()
{
    string word, reverse;

    cout << "Please enter a word to test for palindrome : ";
    cin >> word;
    cout << "Your word is: "<< word << endl;

    int i = 0;
    int size = word.length() - 1;
    while (size >= 0)
    {
        reverse[i++] = word[size--];
        //cout << reverse[i++];
    }

    cout << "The reversed word is: " << reverse << endl;


    if (word == reverse)
        cout << "It is palindrome" << endl;
    else
        cout << "It is not a palindrome" << endl;
}

I’m not sure what I am doing wrong with my while loop. I keep on decrementing it and and I have a valid exit condition, so why does it get stuck in a loop?

Answer 1

You’re not getting an infinite loop; you’re getting a crash due to an Out Of Bounds access in the line reverse[i++] because reverse is an empty string. Try using the reverse.push_back() function instead.