While Loop in For Loop

Question

I'm trying to count the cats and dogs in a string. So,

for example:

if the string is "cc+dd-cd",:

I want to count 2 positive cats, 2 positive dogs, 1 negative cat, 1 negative dog (yes I know this is a weird way to count, but it's part of my assignment).

I thought about doing a for loop where I iterated over the string, then nested inside the for loop, I'd have a while loop that would run until a '-', then run until a '+' or the end. I started the code, and without even getting that far into it, it created an infinite loop.

Question: How can I fix it?

Thanks!

string animalparkString = "cc+dd-cd" 
for (int k = 0; k != animalparkString.size(); k++)
   {
       while (k != '-'){
           pdc = pdc + 1; //positive dog count
           pcc = pcc + 1; //positive cat count
       }
       while (k != '+') {
           ndc = ndc + 1;
           ncc = ncc + 1;
       }
       
   }

Answer 1

The immediate issue is that the while loops check k's value, but don't modify it. So once you entered one of them you'll be stuck there infinitely as k doesn't change inside the loop's body.

I wouldn't bother with nested loops - I'd just go over the entire string in one loop, and evaluate each character in its turn. A neat way to accomplish this is to keep a state of whether you're adding or subtracting (according to whether you last encountered a + or a - sign:

bool positive = true;
string animalparkString = "cc+dd-cd";
for (int k = 0; k < animalparkString.size(); k++) {
     char ch = animalparkString[k];

     switch (ch) {
         case '+':
             positive = true;
             break;
         case '-':
             positive = false;
             break;
         case 'c':
             if (positive) {
                 pcc++;
             } else {
                 ncc++
             }
             break;
         case 'd':
             if (positive) {
                 pdc++;
             } else {
                 ndc++
             }
             break;
     }
}

Answer 2

This post describes iterating all characters is a string.

This is a simple solution using modern C++:

int sign = 1; 
int dogs_count = 0, cats_count = 0;  
std::string animalparkString = "-cccccc+dddd-cd"; 
for (const char& ch : animalparkString)
{
     switch (ch) {
         case '+':
             sign = 1;
             continue;
         case '-':
             sign = -1;
             continue;
         case 'c':
             cats_count += sign;
             continue;
         case 'd':
             dogs_count += sign;
             continue;
     } 
}

std::cout <<"dogs: " << dogs_count << " cats: " <<cats_count;  

A couple of suggestions to help you get started:
1. Use online c++ compilers to quickly test code
2. If your code doesn't behave as expected, use step-by-step debugging in your IDE or print our variables as you go using std::cout
3. Explicitly stating namespace is considered good practice. i.e:

// preferable:  
std::string myString; 
// avoid:  
using namespace std;  
string myString