otay fellas, heres the situation... im writing a console class for debugging and stuff, and its all done except for one small problem. the function im using to execute the commands isnt working properly.. without further ado, here is some code:

    
int CConsole::Command(char lparam[1024], char wparam[1024])
{
	if(lparam == "TOGGLEFS") 
	{ 
		ToggleFullscreen(c_hWnd); 
		AddLine("-- Fullscreen Mode Toggled");
	}
        // note, this is just a lil snippet of what ive got, didnt

        // want to bog anybody down

	return (0);
}
    

ok, the string im passing to command is a private class variable szCommand[1024]. when i call MyConsole.Command(szCommand, NULL); nothing happens. yet- when i call MyConsole.Command("TOGGLEFS", NULL); it works perfectly.. is there something im missing? i know im gonna be slapping myself after this. hopefully anyway.. heh -eldee ;another space monkey; [ Forced Evolution Studios ]

Edited by - eldee on February 23, 2002 8:26:56 PM

You cannot compare C-style strings with ==. This will only compare the actual addresses the char pointers are pointing to. So if the passed in string is stored at 0x0001a000 and the string constant "TOGGLEFS" is stored at 0x0020b000, the comparison will fail no matter how equal the strings are.
Use the strcmp standard C function for comparing two strings like this.
The reason it works when you do pass in a constant string is because the compiler is intelligent enough to recognize that the two constants are equal and to put just one instance of it in the area of memory allocated for static data.

Thou shalt not compare char*s with ==
Thou shalt use strcmp() instead.

That''s because even if your variable contains the same text as the constant "TOGGLEFS", it does NOT point to the same place.

The compiler usually places one single "TOGGLEFS" string somewhere in memory and all instances of "TOGGLEFS" in your code actually are pointers to that place (which means that, yes, "TOGGLEFS"[5] is equal to ''E'').

But that''s not always true, other compilers may keep several copies, which would mean that "TOGGLEFS" == "TOGGLEFS" could be false

i knew i could count on you guys
i learn something new every day.. thats what i love about
this stuff. always something new to frustrate and confuse, and
eventually overcome.

Remember, in C, expressions are evaluated, some at compile time, others at runtime.

"This is a string" is an expression. So is MY_CONSTANT. So is myVariable. So is 3 + 4 * x. So is myFunction(x). Those are all expressions.

Remember that a quoted string is an expression which is evaluated at compile time to the pointer which points to the strnig.

So, look at this expression: strcmp ("Apples, myVariable);

"Apples" evaluates to the pointer which points to where the characters "Apples" reside at. myVariable evaluates to whatever myVariable contains. These are passed into the function strcmp().

Look at: char *stuff = "Apples and oranges";

"Apples and oranges" evaluates to the pointer where the string resides. That makes for an easy assignmnet into the character pointer *stuff.

Look at: char stuff[32] = "Apples and oranges";

The above statement is the ONE exception to the way the compiler handles strings. It will let you slide on this particular syntac because it is convenient. In this case, it will assign the letters of the string into your character buffer called stuff.

___________________________________

quote:Original post by Kylotan
Of course, since you're using C++, you'd probably be better served by investigating the standard string class, which does allow == comparisons, plus a whole lot more.

yeah, a few months ago i first dipped my hand into the string
class, and i ran into a few problems. (the same problems may
exist with char's, but im more familiar with how they work).
the main problem was speed...
i had a nested for loop that looked somethin like this:

int i, j;for(int y = 0; y < 200; y++){   for(int x = 0; x < 200; x++)   {        i = tempstring.find("&",i) + 2;	j = tempstring.find("?",i+1);        	if (j > 0)        {	    sHex = mid(tempstring, i, j - i);	    Terrain[x][y].surface = clng(sHex);	}			i = j;  }}  

like i said, that's probably slow no matter how you do it,
but i was scared to mess with it after that
i'll probably pick it up again after this project im working on
now, i just wanted this project to be something i'd be
totaly familiar with inside out.


-eldee
;another space monkey;
[ Forced Evolution Studios ]

[Edit: You know you're anal when you go back and fix your pseudo-code's compile errors]

Edited by - eldee on February 24, 2002 7:23:54 PM