How can I search for a character in a string? - c++

Question

I'm writing a program that converts a short date (mm/dd/yyyy) to a long date (March 12, 2014) and prints out the date.
The program has to work given the following user inputs:
10/23/2014
9/25/2014
12/8/2015
1/1/2016
I have the program working with the first user input but I'm not sure how to proceed with handling a user input that doesn't have a "0" in the first position of the string.
#include <iostream>
#include <string>
using namespace std;
int main()
{
string date;
cout << "Enter a date (mm/dd/yyyy): " << endl;
getline(cin, date);
string month, day, year;
// Extract month, day, and year from date
month = date.substr(0, 2);
day = date.substr(3, 2);
year = date.substr(6, 4);
// Check what month it is
if (month == "01") {
month = "January";
}
else if (month == "02") {
month = "February";
}
else if (month == "03") {
month = "March";
}
else if (month == "04") {
month = "April";
}
else if (month == "05") {
month = "May";
}
else if (month == "06") {
month = "June";
}
else if (month == "07") {
month = "July";
}
else if (month == "08") {
month = "August";
}
else if (month == "09") {
month = "September";
}
else if (month == "10") {
month = "October";
}
else if (month == "11") {
month = "November";
}
else {
month = "December";
}
// Print the date
cout << month << " " << day << "," << year << endl;
return 0;
}
I'd greatly appreciate any help.

Answer 1

As Red Serpent wrote in the comments: Search for the / using std::string::find, e.g.
#include <iostream>
int main()
{
std::string date = "09/28/1983";
int startIndex = 0;
int endIndex = date.find('/');
std::string month = date.substr(startIndex, endIndex);
startIndex = endIndex + 1;
endIndex = date.find('/', endIndex + 1);
std::string day = date.substr(startIndex, endIndex - startIndex);
std::string year = date.substr(endIndex + 1, 4);
std::cout << month.c_str() << " " << day.c_str() << "," << year.c_str() << std::endl;
return 0;
}

Answer 2

You could also take advantage of stream conversion, for a less efficient but simpler solution:
#include <iostream>
#include <string>
using namespace std;
int main() {
string months[] = {"", "January", "February", "Mars", "April", "May", "June", "Jully", "August", "September", "October", "December"};
cout << "Enter a date (mm/dd/yyyy): " << endl;
char c;
int day, month, year;
cin >> day >> c >> month >> c >> year;
// error handling is left as an exercice to the reader.
cout << months[month] << " " << day << ", " << year << endl;
return 0;
}