Separating every second digit in an integer C++ - c++

Question

I am currently finishing up an assignment I have to complete for my OOP class and I am struggling with 1 part in particular. Keep in mind I am still a beginner. The question is as followed:
If the string contains 13 characters, all of characters are digits and the check digit is modulo 10, this function returns true; false otherwise.
This is in regards to a EAN. I basically have to separate every second digit from the rest digits. for example 9780003194876 I need to do calculations with 7,0,0,1,4,7. I have no clue about doing this.
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
bool isValid(const char* str){
if (atoi(str) == 13){
}
return false;
}

Answer 1

You can start with a for loop which increments itself by 2 for each execution:
for (int i = 1, len = strlen(str); i < len; i += 2)
{
int digit = str[i] - '0';
// do something with digit
}
The above is just an example though...

Answer 2

Since the question was tagged as C++ (Not C, so I suggest other answerers to not solve this using C libraries, please. Let us getting OP's C++ knoweledge in the right way since the beggining), and is an OOP class I'm going to solve this with the C++ way: Use the std::string class:
bool is_valid( const std::string& str )
{
if( str.size() == 13 )
{
for( std::size_t i = 0 ; i < 13 ; i += 2 )
{
int digit = str[i] - '0';
//Do what you wan't with the digit
}
}
else
return false;
}

Answer 3

First, if it's EAN, you have to process every digit, not just
every other one. In fact, all you need to do is a weighted sum
of the digits; for EAN-13, the weigths alternate between 1 and
3, starting with three. The simplest solution is probably to
put them in a table (i.e. int weigt[] = { 1, 3, 1, 3... };,
and iterate over the string (in this case, using an index rather
than iterators, since you want to be able to index into
weight as well), converting each digit into a numerical value
(str[i] - '0', if isdigit(static_cast<unsigned char>(str[i])
is true; if it's false, you haven't got a digi.), then
multiplying it by the running total. When you're finished, if
the total, modulo 10, is 0, it's correct. Otherwise, it isn't.
You certainly don't want to use atoi, since you don't want the
numerical value of the string; you want to treat each digit
separately.
Just for the record, professionally, I'd write something like:
bool
isValidEAN13( std::string const& value )
{
return value.size() == 13
&& std::find_if(
value.begin(),
value.end(),
[]( unsigned char ch ){ return !isdigit( ch ); } )
== value.end()
&& calculateEAN13( value ) == value.back() - '0';
}
where calculateEAN13 does the actual calculations (and can be
used for both generation and checking). I suspect that this
goes beyond the goal of the assignment, however, and that all
your teacher is looking for is the calculateEAN13 function,
with the last check (which is why I'm not giving it in full).