UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hello,
i have a program where i have to get a character from the user and check it against the word i have and then replace the character in a blank at the same position it is in the word.

Is it a game?

Code:

WORD="nasty"

while true
do
   echo -e "Input a char: \c"
   read CHAR
   CHARS="${CHARS}${CHAR}"
   echo "$WORD" | sed "s/[^${CHARS}]/-/g"
done

That's a cool way to go about doing a hangman type game. Should be pretty easy to have it pick a random dictionary word to use for $WORD and then give a certain number of guesses and decrement the count each time a wrong letter is guessed. Thanks for killing time for me at work on a Holiday

dear robotronic

thanks a lot for the reply. its working correctly but its still asking for another character even when the word is there. i think more needs to be put in the while condition. apart from that as evident its a game, i have to keep a count of no of guesses by the user and as well as the lives the user lost(wrong guesses). i dont know where to update those variables in the current loop. thanks in advance

Code:

WORD="nasty"
cnt=0
known="n"
while [ $known = "n" ]
do
   echo -e "Input a char: \c"
   read CHAR
   CHARS="${CHARS}${CHAR}"
   ((cnt = cnt + 1))
   disp=$(echo "$WORD" | sed "s/[^${CHARS}]/-/g")
   echo $disp
   if [ $WORD = $disp ]
      then
      known="y"
   fi
done 
echo $cnt" guesses"

Thanks Joeyg,
the program is working fine but another requisite was that i have to count the no of wrong guesses as well and deduct it from the no of lives given to the user. these lives are user defined. the control should move out of the while loop as soon as the word is found or the no of lives are finished. even otherwise if the word is guessed correctly it should show that in how many attempts(which the program is doing) and how many loss of lives the user has guessed it. thanks in advance

Hi there,

Is there a way to do all the above mentioned things without the sed command. i have to replace the - with the letter at its original position as well as out the total no of attempts and no of wrong guesses and deduct it by the lives defibed by the user. thanks in advance