MATLAB: Strings, while loop help

strings

 clear; clc;
fid = fopen('hangman.txt','r');
if fid < 0,    error('Cannot open file');    
end
data = textscan(fid,'%s');
data = data{1};
fclose(fid); 
index = ceil(rand * numel(data));
word = data{index};
masked = word; 
masked(~isspace(masked)) = '*';
complete = 0;
 while complete == 0
 clc; fprintf('Word : %s\n',masked);
 letter = (input('Guess a letter : ','s'));
 stat = findstr(word,letter);
 if ~isempty(stat)
 masked(stat) = letter;        
    end
    if isempty(findstr(masked,'*'))
        complete = 1;
    end    
end
clc; fprintf('Word : %s\n',masked);
My letters are still case sensitive, not sure why. And I'm not sure how I could break the while loop so it stops after six incorrect guesses.

Best Answer

Chris, try this:
word = 'MyMatlab';
masked = repmat('*', size(word));
wrongGuesses = 0;
wordGuessed = false;
while wrongGuesses < 6
    clc; fprintf('Word : %s\n',masked);
    % Note we're forcing everything to lower case
    letter = lower(input('Guess a letter : ','s'));
    wordMask = lower(word)==letter;
      if any(wordMask)
          masked(wordMask) = letter;
      else
          wrongGuesses = wrongGuesses+1;
      end
      if ~any(masked=='*')
          wordGuessed = true;
          break; % This exits out of the while loop
      end    
  end
  clc; fprintf('Word : %s\n',masked);
You'll see above that we can use lower to remove case-sensitivity. Also note that I'm using a straight letter comparison via the == operator. This is because findstr is not recommended (it will be removed in a future version of MATLAB), but you could just as easily use strfind (I know... confusing.)
Also note the two ways to exit the loop. One coming from too many wrong guesses, another coming from the break statement if all asterixs have been replaced. You'll be able to tell which exit happened by checking the wordGuessed boolean.
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