function not returning value I want

Question

I want to be able to to take the user input and assign the given letter a value. I think I got that part down, now the problem is returning the value.

#include <iostream>
#include <string>
using namespace std;

int ch2n(string word);

int main()
{
     string inputWord;

     cout << "Type Word: ";
     cin >> inputWord;
     cout << ch2n(inputWord);
}

int ch2n(string word)
{
    int total = 0;
    for(int i = 0;i != word.size(); i++)
    {
        if(word.find(i) == 'a' || word.find(i) == 'A')
        {
            total += 1;
        }
    }
    return total;
}

when I declare the total to 0, the return is always 0, but when I don't declare it, I get a return value of 229.... etc random number.

Answer 1

I think word.find(i) is probably not what you want to call there. To access a specific character within the string, use square brackets, i.e.: word[i] instead of word.find(i).

Answer 2

If you don't initialize it (set its value), using it is undefined behaviour and can return any random value - including 0

types without constructor, like int will just allocate space and have an undefinedd value, generally based on whatever happens to be in that location from prior use.

word.find does not do what you think it does, it is searching for i in word

You want to just use word[] :

if(word[i] == 'a' || word[i] == 'A')

Also, you might want to put std::endl at the end of your cout lines