Function always returns false

[gretty]

Hello

I have a function that takes in a 'word pattern' & a word & determines if the word contains the same characters in the same position as the 'word pattern'.

For eg;

'word pattern' = he???
word = hello

- The function will return true because the word variable matches the pattern of the 'word pattern'

eg 2

'word pattern' = ma??h
word = hello

- The function will return false because the word doesn't match the 'word pattern'

My Problem is when I use the function, it doesn't work, it returns false for everything even when it is given a correct word pattern & word which should return true.

bool wordPattern(string w1, string w2) {

	for (int i=0; i<(int)w1.size();i++)
	{
		if ( isalpha(w1[i]) ) {            // if this character is not a '?'
			size_t  val= w2.find(w1[i],i); 
			if(val==string::npos) { return false; }  // if we find that a character from
			                                         // w1 is not present in w2 at position i
			                                         // then return false;
		}
	}
	return true;

}

The way I use this string is I search an 'array of words' for words that have the same length as the 'word pattern' then I implement the function wordPattern to check if they have the same pattern.

void search(string array[], int a_size, string w) {

	for (int i=0; i<a_size; i++) {
		if (array[i].length() == w.length()) {
			if (wordPattern(w,array[i]))
				cout << array[i] << "\n";
		}
	}
}

[Ancient Dragon]

Easy implementation. It becomes a little more complicated when you want to also use '*'. Much more complex implementations can be found in boost regex library (regular expression library).

bool wordPattern(string pattern, string word) {
    if( pattern.length() != word.length())
        return false;
    for(int i = 0; i < word.size(); i++)
    {
        if( pattern[i] != '?' && pattern[i] != word[i] )
            return false;
    }
    return true;
}

[gretty]

Thanks, I knew I was over complicating it. :)