Question

User should enter a few strings and input space as string when he is done.
Code should return longest and shortest word entered.

strcmp always returns -1… what am i doing wrong?

#include <iostream>
#include <cstring>
using namespace std;
int main() {
    char S[100][20];
    int I = 0;
    do {
            cout << "Enter text:" << endl;
            cin.getline(S[I],100);
    } while (I < 19 && strcmp(S[I++],""));
    char Max[100], Min[100];
    strcpy(Max, S[0]);
    strcpy(Min, S[0]);
    for (int J = 1; J < I; J++) {
        if (strcmp(S[J], Max) == 1)
            strcpy(Max, S[J]);
        if (strcmp(S[J], Min) == -1)
            strcpy(Min, S[J]);
    }
    cout << "Max = " << Max << endl;
    cout << "Min = " << Min << endl;
    system("pause");
    return 0;
}

Answer 1

So, a couple of things:

• variables should be lowercase;
• you are defining your array of string with wrong length (should be s[20][100]);
• in your while cycle, you should go ’till i < 20;
• the last string in your array will always be the empty string (hence: s_min will be always empty);
• strcmp compares strings, it doesn’t tell you which one is the longest. You should use strlen for that…

Here the working code:

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

int main() {
  char s[20][100];
  int i = 0;
  do {
    cout << "Enter text:" << endl;
    cin.getline(s[i], 100);
  } while (i < 20 && strcmp(s[i++],""));

  char s_max[100], s_min[100];
  strcpy(s_max, s[0]);
  strcpy(s_min, s[0]);
  for (int j = 1; j < i-1; j++) {
    if (strlen(s[j]) > strlen(s_max))
      strcpy(s_max, s[j]);
    if (strlen(s[j]) < strlen(s_min))
      strcpy(s_min, s[j]);
  }

  cout << "Max = " << s_max << endl;
  cout << "Min = " << s_min << endl;
  return 0;
}