Hangman Two Words Regex

Question

When a word has an empty space (meaning there are two words), I want to put a forward slash in that index.

So: Hello There = _ _ _ _ _ / _ _ _ _ _

At the moment my game converts all characters in to an underscore so if the user enters two words, the other player will never get the word right.

So what I need to do is basically replace the EMPTY SPACE with a forward slash AND whilst I am processing the input from the user, check if the actual words at equal to _ _ _ _ _ / _ _ _ _ etc.

Ie checking WITH a forward slash.

My Code: This is the code which generates the underscores:

for (int i = 0; i < word.Length; i++) { label += "_ "; }

this is the code which processes letters which the user chose:

public string Process(string gameLetter, string currentWord)
    {
        underscoredWord = currentWord;
        if (word.Contains(gameLetter))
        {
            correctLetters += gameLetter;
            underscoredWord = Regex.Replace(word.Replace(" ", "/"), "[^" + correctLetters + "]", " _");

            if (underscoredWord == word)
                return underscoredWord;
        }
        else
            tries++;

        return underscoredWord; //return with no amendments
    }

Any idea how I can modify them both to allow the game to work with two words? Any help is highly appreciated.

Answer 1

Instead of looping through each char, simply use a regex pattern to match and replace first the blank spaces, then alphanumeric chars

    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        string word = args[0];
        string label = string.Empty;

        label = new Regex(" ").Replace(word, " / ");
        label = new Regex("([a-zA-z0-9])").Replace(label, "_ ");            

        Console.WriteLine(word);
        Console.WriteLine(label);

        Console.ReadLine();
    }

Hope you find this helpful:)

Answer 2

Just for you, i've compiled how i would have modified your above code to implement the game. hope it helps you!

namespace Hangman
    {
        class Program
        {
            static string word = string.Empty;
            static string label = string.Empty;
            static int tries = 0;
            static string misses = string.Empty;

            static void Main(string[] args)
            {
                word = args[0];

                label = new Regex(" ").Replace(word, "/");
                label = new Regex("([a-zA-z0-9])").Replace(label, "_");

                ProcessKeyStroke();

                Console.Read();
            }


            static void ProcessKeyStroke()
            {
                // Write the latest game information
                Console.Clear();
                Console.WriteLine("Tries remaining: {0}", 9 - tries);
                Console.WriteLine(label);
                Console.WriteLine("Misses: {0}", misses);

                // Check if the player won
                if (!label.Contains("_"))
                {
                    Console.WriteLine("You won!");
                    return;
                }

                // Check if the player lost
                if (tries == 9)
                {
                    Console.WriteLine("You lost!\n\nThe word was: {0}", word);
                }

                // Process the key stroke
                char gameLetter = Console.ReadKey().KeyChar;
                bool MatchFound = false;

                int Index = 0;
                foreach (char currentLetter in word.ToLower())
                {
                    if (currentLetter == gameLetter)
                    {
                        MatchFound = true;

                        label = label.Remove(Index, 1);
                        label = label.Insert(Index, gameLetter.ToString());
                    }
                    Index++;
                }

                // Add the miss if the playe rmissed
                if (!MatchFound)
                {
                    tries++;
                    misses += gameLetter + ", ";
                }

                // Recurse
                ProcessKeyStroke();
            }
        }
    }

Answer 3

While I think it's a neat idea to work with regular expressions to fix some of the display and input things, I'd go a step further and put all game-related logic inside a class which handles most of the input and states.

If you don't mind, I've put together a simple proof-of-concept class which also should compile for Windows Phone: https://github.com/jcoder/nHangman

The main ideas:

• internal list with the solution characters, each with the associated info if it's a space or a guessed character
• handles single char guess
• handles complete solution guess
• stores count of all guesses and failed guesses
• provides a method to retrieve string with current state of guess

Of course, this class is not complete, but might provide some ideas how to implement the main "game engine".