Passing c-strings to class function (assigning it to class member) - c++

Question

I have a class called Person:
class Person {
private:
char name[50];
unsigned int number;
public:
void set_data(const char *newname, unsigned int number) {
*name= *newname; //THE MAIN PROBLEM I WANT TO SOLVE
this->number = number;
}
char* get_name() {
return this->name;
}
unsigned int get_number() {
return this->number;
}
};
I have arrays:
const char *names[] = {"Mark", "Pavel", "Bill", "Jasur", "Jeff"};
int phones[] = { 1234567890, 9876543210, 123321456654, 1998946848479, 1234554321 };
I'm using for loop to set Person members:
Person p;
for (int i = 0; i < 5; i++) {
p.set_data(names[i], phones[i]);
cout << p.get_name() << endl;
}
When I run this, I'm getting wrong output.

Answer 1

Using * the way you are, you are only copying the 1st char into name. You are also not null-terminating name either, which is required by the overloaded operator<< that takes a char* as input.
To copy the entire string, you need to use std::strcpy() (or better, std::strncpy()) instead, eg:
#include <cstring>
void set_data(const char *newname, unsigned int newnumber) {
//std::strcpy(name, newname);
std::strncpy(name, newname, 49);
name[49] = '\0';
number = newnumber;
}
However, since this is C++ and not C, you really should be using std::string instead:
#include <string>
class Person {
private:
std::string name;
unsigned int number;
public:
void set_data(const std::string &newname, unsigned int newnumber) {
name = newname;
number = newnumber;
}
std::string get_name() const {
return name;
}
/* or:
const std::string& get_name() const {
return name;
}
*/
unsigned int get_number() const {
return number;
}
};