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Hey guys. Sorry the topic's not that descriptive, but it's a small problem that's probably easily fixable but my underdeveloped brain refuses to find an answer.

I'm up in Oregon now on our yearly pilgrimage and for the month up here I'm stuck with a 28800 bps connection, which is why I'm stuck with QB45.

Anyway, I've been trying to rewrite a tiny RPG battle system I made a while back, and this time I'm using TYPES instead of seperate arrays. Well, the problem is this: At the Main Menu, I want to list the player and his HP, and, if he has any party members, their names and their HP. However, I'm having a problem getting them to show up. Here's the code I'm having trouble with:

Code:
FOR j = 1 TO 5

     IF party(j).n <> "" THEN PRINT UCASE$(party(j).n) + ":"; party(j).hp; "HP"

    NEXT j

The declaration, "n", hold's the character's name, and each party array's "hp" declaration holds 50. Unfortunatly, when I run the program, instead of just displaying the player's name and HP, like it's supposed to do, it does this (_ = space):

Quote:<MAIN MENU>
YOU: 50 HP

________________:___50 HP

________________:___50 HP

________________:___50 HP

________________:___50 HP

________________:___50 HP

What's going on here? I thought I wrote the code correctly. I don't recall ever having this problem before. Is there something wrong with the laptop I'm using, or is there just a stupid little mistake I made somewhere that I'm not seeing?

If you want to see the whole code so far, for any reason, here it is:

Code:
'REVAMPED PARTY AND BATTLE SYSTEM

'By Boxtop

DECLARE SUB InitEngine ()

TYPE pim

 n AS STRING * 100

 hp AS INTEGER

 chance AS INTEGER

END TYPE

DIM SHARED party(5) AS pim

DIM SHARED npcs$(100)

DIM SHARED l$(100)

DIM SHARED ttlloc AS INTEGER

DIM SHARED ttlnpc AS INTEGER

DIM SHARED npcask AS INTEGER

DIM SHARED monster AS INTEGER

DIM SHARED plyrHP AS INTEGER

RANDOMIZE TIMER

InitEngine

CLS

PRINT "REMADE PARTY AND BATTLE SYSTEM"

PRINT "BY BOXTOP"

PRINT

1

rndloc% = INT(RND * ttlloc) + 1

CLS

PRINT "<MAIN MENU>"

PRINT

PRINT "PARTY ROSTER:"

PRINT "YOU:"; plyrHP; "HP"

   IF party(1).n <> "" THEN

    FOR j = 1 TO 5

     IF party(j).n <> "" THEN PRINT UCASE$(party(j).n) + ":"; party(j).hp; "HP"

    NEXT j

   END IF

PRINT

PRINT "You and your party are currently " + l$(rndloc%) + "."

SUB InitEngine

     OPEN "npc.dat" FOR INPUT AS #1

       DO WHILE NOT EOF(1)

         INPUT #1, ttlnpc

           IF ttlnpc > 100 THEN PRINT "ERROR: FILE npc.dat HAS TOO MANY ENTRIES ( > 100)": END

         FOR npcrt = 1 TO ttlnpc

           INPUT #1, npcs$(npcrt)

         NEXT npcrt

       LOOP

     CLOSE #1

     OPEN "loc.dat" FOR INPUT AS #1

       DO WHILE NOT EOF(1)

         INPUT #1, ttlloc

          IF ttlloc > 100 THEN PRINT "ERROR: FILE loc.dat HAS TOO MANY ENTRIES ( > 100)": END

         FOR lcrt = 1 TO ttlloc

           INPUT #1, l$(lcrt)

         NEXT lcrt

       LOOP

     CLOSE #1

     plyrHP = 50

     npcask = INT(RND * 3) + 1

     monster = INT(RND * 6) + 1

     FOR i = 1 TO 5

       party(i).hp = 50

     NEXT i

END SUB

At first glance, it looks like you aren't initializing party anywhere. The reason your code prints spaces is that the unused part of fixed-length strings is always filled with spaces. You can get rid of them when printing, etc. with RTRIM$ or similar.

yeah,. that is weird though. in the prog he does not assign party(x).n, BUT:

Quote:PRINT "YOU:"; plyrHP; "HP"

IF party(1).n <> "" THEN
FOR j = 1 TO 5
IF party(j).n <> "" THEN PRINT UCASE$(party(j).n) + ":"; party(j).hp; "HP"
NEXT j
END IF

PRINT

that condition should never be filled; none of the names should be printed... wtf??

It will always be true, because as I said, fixed-len strings are filled with spaces. If you want that to work, you should do

Code:
IF RTRIM$(party(1).n) <> "" THEN

or something similar.

OH. >.> That makes sense.

you should also probably do:

Code:
FOR j = 1 TO 5 

  IF RTRIM$(party(j).n) <> "" THEN 

    PRINT UCASE$(party(j).n) + ":"; party(j).hp; "HP" 

  END IF

NEXT j

The RTRIM$() trick doesn't work for me. And the only reason I have a fixed length string is that QBASIC complains about a missing "*" when I try to declare a normal string, even though QBASIC's manual implies otherwise. Is there a way I can get around that?

sure, try this:

Code:
FOR j = 1 TO 5 

  IF (party(j).n <> space$(100)) THEN '' space$( lengthOfYourString)

    PRINT UCASE$(party(j).n) + ":"; party(j).hp; "HP" 

  END IF

NEXT j

Wow, I never realised the rtrim didn't trim fixed length strings. (At least ones defined in types anyway). I guess I'm too used to FB and VB. Tongue

Fixed length strings are padded with ascii code 0 (null), rather than ascii code 32 (space). This is why RTRIM$ and LTRIM$ don't seem to operate properly because they only attempt to remove the space character.

To trim out the null characters, try this cludge (not perfect because if the string is all null characters, this expression returns a string with one null character in it.)

left$(S, instr(S,chr$(0)))
where S is your fixed lenght string.

To test for an empty string try check the condition
instr(s,chr$(0))=1

Example:
assuming sarray is an array of fixed length strings.

Code:
for index=lbound(sarray) to ubound(sarray)

  if not (instr(sarray(index),chr$(0))=1)

     print left$(sarray(index),instr(sarray(index),chr$(0));

   end if

next index

Eh, nevermind. I took a shortcut and used a seperate string array. :b

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