Why the simple multiplication would result in some garbled characters? - c++

Question

I try to design a program that implements the multiplication between two big integers(Using C++). But after I complete it, I found that if I input the two integers by the command arguments, the results would be sometimes very weird and sometimes right. Please help me figure out the reason and tell me how to fix it. Thanks (The main function that implements the function of multiplication between two big integers is mul() ).
#include <iostream>
#include <cstring>
#include <stdlib.h>
using namespace std;
void mul(char *c1, char *c2, int len1, int len2);
void printArr(char *c1, char *c2, int len1, int len2);
int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
if (argv[1] != NULL)
{
char cArr1[500], cArr2[500];
for (int i = 0; i < strlen(argv[1]); i++)
{
cArr1[i] = argv[1][i];
}
for (int i = 0; i < strlen(argv[2]); i++)
{
cArr2[i] = argv[2][i];
}
int len1 = strlen(cArr1);
int len2 = strlen(cArr2);
printArr(cArr1, cArr2, len1, len2);
(len1 > len2) ? mul(cArr1, cArr2, len1, len2) : mul(cArr2, cArr1, len2, len1);
exit(100);
}
while (true)
{
cout << "Please input two integers" << endl;
char cArr1[500], cArr2[500];
cin >> cArr1;
if (cArr1[0] == 'q' && cArr1[1] == 'u' && cArr1[2] == 'i' && cArr1[3] == 't')
{
exit(1000);
}
cin >> cArr2;
int parity = 0;
int len1 = strlen(cArr1);
int len2 = strlen(cArr2);
printArr(cArr1, cArr2, len1, len2);
if (cArr1[0] == '-')
{
for (int i = 1; i < len1; i++)
{
cArr1[i - 1] = cArr1[i];
}
parity++;
len1--;
}
if (cArr2[0] == '-')
{
for (int i = 1; i < len2; i++)
{
cArr2[i - 1] = cArr2[i];
}
parity++;
len2--;
}
bool isDigit = true;
for (int i = 0; i < len1; i++)
{
if (!isdigit(cArr1[i]))
{
isDigit = false;
}
}
for (int i = 0; i < len2; i++)
{
if (!isdigit(cArr2[i]))
{
isDigit = false;
}
}
if (!isDigit)
{
cout << "\rInvalid input. Try again" << endl;
continue;
}
if (parity % 2 != 0)
{
cout << "-";
}
(len1 > len2) ? mul(cArr1, cArr2, len1, len2) : mul(cArr2, cArr1, len2, len1);
}
}
void mul(char *bigger, char *smaller, int bigLen, int smallLen)
{
int *bigNum = new int[bigLen];
int *smallNum = new int[smallLen];
for (int i = 0; i < bigLen; i++)
{
bigNum[i] = bigger[bigLen - i - 1] - '0';
}
for (int i = 0; i < smallLen; i++)
{
smallNum[i] = smaller[smallLen - i - 1] - '0';
}
int res[30];
for (int i = 0; i < 30; i++)
{
res[i] = 0;
}
for (int i = 0; i < smallLen; i++)
{
for (int j = 0; j < bigLen; j++)
{
res[i + j] += bigNum[j] * smallNum[i];
}
}
for (int i = 0; i < bigLen + smallLen; i++)
{
int digit = res[i] % 10;
int carry = res[i] / 10;
res[i] = digit;
res[i + 1] += carry;
}
bool null = false;
for (int i = bigLen + smallLen - 1; i >= 0; i--)
{
if (res[i] != 0 && res[i + 1] == 0)
{
null = true;
}
if (null)
{
cout << res[i];
}
}
cout << endl;
}
void printArr(char *c1, char *c2, int len1, int len2)
{
for (int i = 0; i < len1; i++)
{
cout << c1[i];
}
cout << " * ";
for (int i = 0; i < len2; i++)
{
cout << c2[i];
}
cout << " = ";
}

Answer 1

Just initialize your char arrays to empty ones:
char cArr1[500] = {};
char cArr2[500] = {};
then, for the sake of clarity, assign the lengths from your arguments to two integers, casting them since the compiler might warn you about incompatibility between size_t and int.
int lenArg1 = 0;
int lenArg2 = 0;
lenArg1 = (int)strlen ( argv[1] );
lenArg2 = (int)strlen ( argv[2] );
Then, printing the lengths len1 and len2 for debugging purposes only:
int len1 = strlen ( cArr1 );
int len2 = strlen ( cArr2 );
cout << "len1 >> " + to_string(len1) <<endl;
cout << "len2 >> " + to_string(len2) <<endl;
In fact, as #Kevin SUN mentioned, it was possible that your argument reading steps were missing the null characters, however, after running some tests it seems to work fine just by initializing the char arrays.
Also, as mentioned in the comments you need to increase the size reserved for res array, I did it to 500
Compiled with g++ -Wall main.cpp -o calc.exe and running: calc 10 100
Without initialization you get problems like:
after initializing, the output works just fine: