Beginner's Tinkering

Question

Can anyone tell me what's wrong with this string of code? I have been fooling around with what I have learned so far (very little) and have gotten stuck using the "if" statement.

#include <iostream>

using namespace std;

int main() {
int age;
int born;
int sex;

cout << "how old are you? ";
cin >> age;
cout << "\nwhen were you born? ";
cin >> born;
cout << "\nare you a man or a woman? ";
cin >> sex;

if (sex = "male") {
born + 76;
}
else {
born + 81;
}

cout << "\nYou will probably die in the year AD." << born << "unless you're the next Rick James, bitch" << endl;

return 0;
}

There are probably a ton of "issues" with the above but since I don't know proper coding etiquette yet, so bear with me.

Answer 1

Your etiquette is fine, don't worry about that. Just two adjustments:

First, int is only for whole numbers. If you want to input text for sex, add this to the top of your code:
#include <string>
and changed sex's type to string:
string sex;

And second, to check if two things are equal, use == (equality operator). If you only use single = (assignment operator), you'll assign "male" to sex every time, and the condition will always be true.

Answer 2

The one thing that definitely jumps out at me:

The equals sign (=) is used for assignment. Meaning that, x = 3 sets the variable x to 3. The equality operator (==) is used for comparison; returning true if two things are equal, and false otherwise. So, when comparing sex to "male", it must be a double-equals sign.

Answer 3

#include <iostream>

using namespace std;

int main() {
int age;
int born;
string sex; // change to string

cout << "how old are you? ";
cin >> age;
cout << "\nwhen were you born? ";
cin >> born;
cout << "\nare you a man or a woman? ";
cin >> sex;

if (sex == "male") { // use 2 equals signs == not 1 =
born += 76; // change operator so that the value is saved into the variable
}
else {
born += 81; // change operator so that the value is saved into the variable
}

// add some spaces so that it prints correctly
cout << "\nYou will probably die in the year AD. " << born << " unless you're the next Rick James, bitch" << endl;

return 0;
}

Other than this it looks good!

Answer 4

Awesome, thanks guys (and gals)!
Really nice to have such an active community, lol I wasn't expecting such a quick response.

This is my second day working on this stuff but so far I'm loving it!