using str.find() to see if a particular letter is in a word

Question

I'm creating a hangman game for school. The words to be guessed are pulled from a data file, the program selects the last word from the file as the word to be used for the game, 'words' is the variable I used for this, as the game goes, the user guesses a letter and if the letter is in the word it is correct and if not it is incorrect and the program displays a "board" or picture of the hangman progressively.

I used str.find() to see if the letter guessed is in the word, the code is as follows:

while (wrongGuess < 7){
    cout << "\nGuess a letter in the word: " << endl;
    cin >> guess;

    if (words.find(guess)==true){
        cout << "Correct! " << guess << " is FOUND in the word " << word << endl;
        continue;}
    else
        {cout << guess << " is NOT FOUND in the word " << endl;
        wrongGuess++;
        if(wrongGuess == 1)
            cout << board2;
        else if(wrongGuess == 2)
            cout << board3;
        else if(wrongGuess == 3)
            cout << board4;
        else if(wrongGuess == 4)
            cout << board5;
        else if(wrongGuess == 5)
            cout << board6;
        else if(wrongGuess == 6)
            cout << board7 << "\nSorry Game Over";
        }

The word that is used is programming.

My problem is sometimes when I enter a correct letter (like r) it tells me I'm right, other times I enter a different correct letter (p) and the program tells me I am wrong.

What do I have wrong?

Answer 1

Use std::string::npos to check th find result.

 if( words.find(guess) != std::string::npos)
 {
    //...
 }
 else
{
}

Answer 2

std::basic_string::find aka. std::string::find returns the position of the given character in the string, not a bool.

The code you've posted sometimes works because true decays to 1 and if the searched character is on position 1, the condition is true.

To fix it, you should do this:

...
if (words.find(guess)!=std::string::npos){
    ...

std::basic_string::find