if statement is not outputting anything C++

Question

I am Making a Simple game and I am having a problem with the if statement. I have the formatting of the statement right but there is no output

I am trying to output a cout text and then ask the user to input another action

I have tried isolating the Problem by trying to print out the string which I used to record the input for the action

#include <iostream>
#include <iomanip>
#include <conio.h>
#include <string>
using namespace std;

int main() {
    int charisma1 = 50;
    string action, choice;

    cout << "Hello There!\n";

    cout << "\nBefore we start you need to learn the basics commands of theis game\n";
    cout << "\nGo North -- To Move North\n";
    cout << "Go South -- To Move South\n";
    cout << "Go West -- To Move West\n";
    cout << "Go East-- To Move East\n";

    cout << "\nIF YOU WANT TO SKIP THE TUTORIAL THEN TYPE \"Yes\": ";
    cin >> choice;
    if (choice != "yes") {
        cout << "\nAttack -- To Attack your enemy (You will have to however have a weapon equiped)\n";
    }

    cout << "\nEast of House\n";

    cout << "\nYou are standing outside in a clearing west of a east house with a boarded front door\n";
    _getch();
    cout << "You see a mailbox there\n";
    cin >> action;
    if (action == "open mailbox"){
        cout << "You see a letter inside\n";
    }

    return 0;
}

you see a mailbox Input: open mailbox you see a letter inside Input: read letter Letter goes here

Note that `#include ` and `_getch();` won't compile with most c++ compilers. You should ditch that stuff for sake of portability. — πάντα ῥεῖ, Jul 01 '19 at 19:13
You ask to type "Yes" but you check for "yes". Try converting the answer to lower-case and then check it. — macroland, Jul 01 '19 at 19:13
"... by trying to print out the string which I used to record the input for the action" where do you do that? I cannot find it in the code you posted. What did you get as output? — 463035818_is_not_an_ai, Jul 01 '19 at 19:14
Also for your input check https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5838711/stdcin-input-with-spaces — macroland, Jul 01 '19 at 19:15

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 01 '19 at 19:21

When you use

cin >> action;
if (action == "open mailbox"){
    cout << "You see a letter inside\n";
}

The conditional in the if is bound to be false. The line to read into action will stop reading when it encounters a whitespace character. If you want to read whitespace characters into action, you can use std::getline.

std::getline(cin, action);

However, that will lead to another problem. The previous call to read from cin,

cin >> choice;

is going to leave the newline character in the stream. Before you can use std::getline, make sure you read and discard the newline character (and anything else before the newline character). You can use cin.ingore for that.

cin.ignore(std::numeric_limits<std::streamsize>::max(), '\n');
std::getline(cin, action);

Add

#include <limits>

to be able to use std::numeric_limits.

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 01 '19 at 19:38

in C++, cin is whitespace-delimited. That means once the function encounters a space, tab, newline, etc, it stops reading characters in. To read a full line (i.e. delimit on Enter) use the getline() function instead and pass it the destination string.

if statement is not outputting anything C++

2 Answers2