How can I loop an if statement

Im designing a game of battleship and I have the following code to prevent ships from overlapping.

x=zeros(1,36);

startingGrid=input('...')

orientation('..')

if orientation=='h'

while x(3)==1

startingGrid=input('... ');

orientation = input('... ');

end

elseif orientation=='v'

while x(4)==1

startingGrid=input('... ');

orientation = input('... ');

end

end

Now this works fine but whenever I enter one of the letters so for example 'h' (and it overlaps) then try again and enter 'v' it then continues with the program even if it overlaps so how can I make it work every time.

[Geoff Hayes]

@Tariq Hammoudeh - how, from the above code, do you determine an overlap? Also, when comparing strings, instead of using == which can lead to errors (if strings on either side of equality or of different size), use strcmp or strcmpi.

[Walter Roberson]

Your while loop does not update the variable you are testing to see if the loop should continue.

[Tariq Hammoudeh]

@Geoff Hayes For the previous ships i set values of the x array to 1 to represent ships, then my code isnt actually x(3)==1. I check actual numbers but i didnt include any of this here, because that isnt my problem, my problem is just that i want this if statement to loop. So for example after entering an orientation of v and the ship overlaps, so it lets me try again (this works fine) but now if i enter an orientation of h and the ship overlaps, it continues it doesnt let me try again. Beacuse i already passed h and went to v.

Answer 1

[Daksh]

It is my understanding that in your scenario, you want the entire checking loop to restart if orientation is "h" but there is an overlap. I also understand that you don't face this issue with orientation "v" as it comes later in the lines and in the next loop iteration it again checks from "h".

For such a scenario, you can use the "continue" keyword in loop to go through the entire checking process again rather than heading to the next orientation. Kindly refer to the following pseudocode:

while (loop)

take inputs

if orientation=='h'

if overlap happens

continue;

end

end

if orientation=='v'

if overlap happens

continue;

end

end

end

Hope it helps!