c, c++ most basic double quotes - c++

char* a="HELLO WORLD";
IF ADDRESS of 'H' is 0x01 then the printf with %s prints to D but if the same code is written with manual printing routine
while(*a!=NULL) {printf("%c",n[a]);n++;}
this prints a few more characters..
but
printf("%s",a);
prints it perfectly.
while(*a++) printf("%c", *(a-1)); or
for(;*a++;)printf("%c", *(a-1));
although work but i dont want solutions but the process mechanisms..
so the question coming to my mind is
whether printf gets the length of the string from some register(or any memory unit)
or it performs character check.. then prints...

The way you're indexing into the character string is odd. It works for the string, but won't stop because you never change the value of *a. What your program does is try to get the a offset of n, so for the first 11 positions they are the same, but the loop doesn't terminate because *a will always be 'H'. What you'd want the terminating condition to be is n < strlen(a).
However, the more succinct way to write that program would be:
int main(int argc, char **argv) {
char *a = "HELLO WORLD";
while(*a) printf("%c", *a++);
return 0;
}
This works because a is an array of characters and as we're printing out each character (de-referencing the value stored at the position) we also increment to the next position. The string should terminate with a NULL reference, which will cause the loop to terminate sine *a == 0 at the NULL terminator.

did you mean or you have error:
int main() {
int n = 0;
char* a="HELLO WORLD";
while(a[n] != NULL) {printf("%c",a[n]);n++;}
}
explanation about what is wrong:
while(*a!=NULL) printf("%c",n[a]);n++;
a is not modified anywhere, so *a will not change it's value.
Although n[a] is perfectly valid construct in C I strongly recommend not to use it, because it is semantically incorrect. You access array by index, not index by array.
You increment index (n++) but check the pointer to array. You could possibly increment a inself like this: while(*a!=NULL) {printf("%c",*a);a++;}

The corect way to do this is:
#include <iostream>
using namespace std;
int main() {
char *a="HELLO WORLD";
int n = 0;
while(a[n]!=NULL){
cout<<a[n];
n++;
}
cout<<'\n';
return 0;
}

As far as I remember, by default when you created char* a it will be something as {HELLO WORLD\0} in memory ('\0' is how %s know the end of the your string is)..
Not sure if '\0' == null will yield true.. but I doubt it

Related

Weird symbols in copied/truncated character array

#include <iostream>
using namespace std;
void truncate(char* s1, char* s2, int n) {
for (int i = 0; i < n; i++) {
s2[i] = s1[i];
}
}
int main() {
char s1[15] = "Hello World";
char s2[10];
int n{ 5 };
truncate(s1, s2, n);
cout << s2; // this should display: Hello
}
When I run this in Visual Studio, I get this output:
Hello╠╠╠╠╠╠╠╠╠╠╠╠╠╠╠Hello World
But when I run it using an online compiler (Online GDB), the output is normal:
Hello
I know it has to do with the \0 terminator but I just can't figure it out.
Your truncate function doesn't add the required nul terminator character to the destination (s2) string. Thus, when you call cout in main, that will keep printing characters until it finds its expected nul (zero) character at some unspecified location following the garbage-initialized data that pre-exists in the parts of the s2 local array that weren't explicitly set by your function. (This is undefined behaviour, and almost anything could actually be displayed; the program may also crash, if the cout call tries to read memory it doesn't have the required access to).
To correct this, simply add that nul (zero, or '\0') character to the end of the string in the truncate function. Assuming you don't go beyond the array's bounds, you can use the "left over" value of the loop index, i, to access the required element; but, to do so, you will need to declare the int i outside of the for loop's scope:
void truncate(char* s1, char* s2, int n)
{
int i; // Must be declared outside the FOR loop ...
for (i = 0; i < n; i++) {
s2[i] = s1[i];
}
s2[i] = '\0'; // ... so we can use it here.
}
Note: Another way (but apparently prohibited by your teacher) would be to set all elements of the s2 array in main to zero, before calling your truncate function:
char s2[10] = ""; // Set ALL elements to zero
Some compilers (seemingly including the online one you use) will "implicitly" set the elements of uninitialized local arrays to zero; but never rely on this: it is not part of the C++ Standard and compilers are not required to enforce such behaviour.

After calling strcpy, the second char array becomes empty

Here is the function prototype in my program:
void FindRepStr(char str[], const char findStr[], const char replaceStr[]);
It find the findStr[] in str[] and replace it with replaceStr[].
Here is my code:
void FindRepStr(char str[], const char findStr[], const char replaceStr[])
{
char *s = nullptr;
s = strstr(str,findStr); //s points to the first-time appear in str
char tmp[] ="";
//length equal
if(strlen(findStr)==strlen(replaceStr))
{
for(int i=0;i<strlen(findStr);i++)
{
if(replaceStr[i]=='\0' || s[i] =='\0')
break;
else
s[i] = replaceStr[i];
}
cout<<str<<endl;
}
else
{
//find shorter than replace
if(strlen(findStr)<strlen(replaceStr))
{
//!!!problem here!!!
strncpy(tmp,s,strlen(s)+1); // store the left part
for(int i=0;i<=strlen(replaceStr);i++)
{
if(replaceStr[i]=='\0') //if end of replace
{
s[i]='\0'; //make s(str) end here
break;
}
else
s[i] = replaceStr[i]; //if not end, give the value
}
}
//finder longer than replace
else
{
//...not finished yet
}
}
}
I haven't finished this but here after strncpy, I printed s and tmp for test and I found tmp is correctly copied, but s print out empty:
cout<<"s before strncpy:"<<s<<endl;
strncpy(tmp,s,strlen(s)+1);
cout<<"tmp after strncpy:"<<tmp<<endl;
cout<<"s after strncpy:"<<s<<endl;
The output:
But in simple test program I write, I found it won't be emptied:
#include<iostream>
#include<cstring>
using namespace std;
int main()
{
char a[]="abc";
char b[]="defgh";
cout<<"a before:"<<a<<endl;
cout<<"b before:"<<b<<endl;
strncpy(a,b,strlen(b)+1);
cout<<"a after:"<<a<<endl;
cout<<"b after:"<<b<<endl;
return 0;
}
The output:
What went wrong in my program?
char tmp[] ="";
Here you are creating a character array with enough space to hold the string literal, including the terminating nul. Since the string literal is empty, this character array holds exactly one character.
If you write more than that (and you do), you enter the realm of undefined behavior. Basically you are dumping your strings all over random places in the stack; predictably, this doesn't end well.
You need to ensure your character array has enough space to do what you want.
Also, your program logic looks entirely broken. I don't see how that code is supposed to do what the function name suggests it should.
char tmp[] ="";
This declares a local array of one char (it just contains the '\x0' terminator).
Copying more than one character into this array causes undefined behaviour: in this case it's destroying the stack frame storing your local variables.
If you want a pointer, declare char *tmp. Better yet, just use std::string for all of this.

Why can't I call my function recursively?

I'm trying to compile this code in order to reverse a string:
void reverse(char *str, int n)
{
if (n==0 || n==1) {
return; //acts as quit
} else {
char i = str[0]; //1st position of string
char j = str[n-1]; //Last position of string
char temp = str[i];
str[i] = str[j]; //Swap
str[j] = temp;
reverse(str[i+1],n-1); // <-- this line
}
}
#include <iostream>
int main()
{
char *word = "hello";
int n = sizeof word;
reverse(word, n);
std::cout << word << std::endl;
return 0;
}
The compiler reports an error where I call reverse() recursively:
invalid conversion from char to char* at reverse(str[i+1], n-1).
Why?
Any advice on other issues in my code is also welcome.
str[i+1] is a character, not a pointer to a character; hence the error message.
When you enter the function, str points to the character you're going to swap with the n:th character away from str.
What you need to do in the recursion is to increment the pointer so it points to the next character.
You also need to decrease n by two, because it should be a distance from str + 1, not from str.
(This is easy to get wrong; see the edit history of this answer for an example.)
You're also using the characters in the strings as indexes into the strings when swapping.
(If you had the input "ab", you would do char temp = str['a']; str['a'] = str['b']; str['b'] = temp;. This is obviously not correct.)
str[0] is not the position of the first character, it is the first character.
Use std::swap if you're allowed to, otherwise see below.
More issues: you shouldn't use sizeof word, as that is either 4 or 8 depending your target architecture - it's equivalent to sizeof(char*).
You should use strlen to find out how long a string is.
Further, you should get a warning for
char *word = "hello";
as that particular conversion is dangerous - "hello" is a const array and modifying it is undefined.
(It would be safe if you never modified the array, but you are, so it isn't.)
Copy it into a non-const array instead:
char word[] = "hello";
and increase the warning level of your compiler.
Here's a fixed version:
void reverse(char *str, int n)
{
if(n <= 1) // Play it safe even with negative n
{
return;
}
else
{
// You could replace this with std::swap(str[0], str[n-1])
char temp = str[0]; //1st character in the string
str[0] = str[n-1]; //Swap
str[n-1] = temp;
// n - 2 is one step closer to str + 1 than n is to str.
reverse(str + 1, n - 2);
}
}
int main()
{
char word[] = "hello";
// sizeof would actually work here, but it's fragile so I prefer strlen.
reverse(word, strlen(word));
std::cout << word << std::endl;
}
I'm going to dissect your code, as if you'd posted over on Code Review. You did ask for other observations, after all...
Firstly,
char *word = "hello";
Your compiler should warn you that pointing a char* at a literal string is undefined behaviour (if not, make sure that you have actually enabled a good set of warnings. Many compilers emit very few warnings by default, for historical reasons). You need to ensure that you have a writable string; for that you can use a char[]:
char word[] = "hello";
The next line
int n = sizeof word;
has now changed meaning, but is still wrong. In your original code, it was the size of a pointer to char, which is unlikely to be the same as the length of the word "hello". With the change to char[], it's now the size of an array of 6 characters, i.e. 6. The sixth character is the NUL that ends the string literal. Instead of the sizeof operator, you probably want to use the strlen() function.
Moving on to reverse():
You read characters from positions in the string, and then use those characters to index it. That's not what you want, and GCC warns against indexing using plain char as it may be signed or unsigned. You just want to index in one place, and your i and j are unnecessary.
Finally, the question you asked. str[i+1] is the character at position i+1, but your function wants a pointer to character, which is simply str+i+1. Or, since we worked out we don't want i in there, just str+1.
Note also that you'll need to subtract 2 from n, not 1, as it will be used as a count of characters from str+1. If you only subtract 1, you'll always be swapping with the last character, and you'll achieve a 'roll' rather than a 'reverse'.
Here's a working version:
void reverse(char *str, int n)
{
if (n < 2)
// end of recursion
return; //acts as quit
char temp = str[0];
str[0] = str[n-1]; //Swap
str[n-1] = temp;
reverse(str+1,n-2);
}
#include <iostream>
#include <cstring>
int main()
{
char word[] = "hello";
int n = std::strlen(word);
reverse(word, n);
std::cout << word << std::endl;
}
We can make further changes. For example, we could use std::swap to express the switching more clearly. And we could pass a pair of pointers instead of a pointer and a length:
#include <utility> // assuming C++11 - else <algorithm>
void reverse(char *str, char *end)
{
if (end <= str)
// end of recursion
return;
std::swap(*str, *end);
reverse(str+1, end-1);
}
and invoke it with reverse(word, word+n-1).
Finally (as I'm not going to mention std::reverse()), here's the idiomatic iterative version:
void reverse(char *str, char *end)
{
while (str < end)
std::swap(*str++, *end--);
}
use like this :
reverse(&str[i+1],n-1);
pass address of the (i+1)th position not value.

string to character conversion error?

After trying for about 1 hour, my code didn't work because of this:
void s_s(string const& s, char data[10])
{
for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++)
data[i] = s[i];
}
int main()
{
string ss = "1234567890";
char data[10];
s_s("1234567890", data);
cout << data << endl;//why junk
}
I simply don't understand why the cout displays junk after the char array. Can someone please explain why and how to solve it?
You need to null terminate your char array.
std::cout.operator<<(char*) uses \0 to know where to stop.
Your char[] decays to char* by the way.
Look here.
As already mentioned you want to NUL terminate your array, but here's something else to consider:
If s is your source string, then you want to loop to s.size(), so that you don't loop past the size of your source string.
void s_s(std::string const& s, char data[20])
{
for (unsigned int i = 0; i < s.size(); i++)
data[i] = s[i];
data[s.size()] = '\0';
}
Alternatively, you can try this:
std::copy(ss.begin(), ss.begin()+ss.size(),
data);
data[ss.size()] = '\0';
std::cout << data << std::endl;
You have ONLY allocated 10 bytes for data
The string is actually 11 bytes since there is an implied '\0' at the end
At a minimum you should increase the size of data to 11, and change your loop to copy the '\0' as well
The function std::ostream::operator<< that you are trying to use in the last line of the main will take your char array as a pointer and will print every char until the null sentinel character is found (the character is \0).
This sentinel character is generally generated for you in statements where a C-string literal is defined:
char s[] = "123";
In the above example sizeof(s) is 4 because the actual characters stored are:
'1', '2', '3', '\0'
The last character is fundamental in tasks that require to loop on every char of a const char* string, because the condition for the loop to terminate, is that the \0 must be read.
In your example the "junk" that you see are the bytes following the 0 char byte in the memory (interpreted as char). This behavior is clearly undefined and can potentially lead the program to crash.
One solution is to obviously add the \0 char at the end of the char array (of course fixing the size).
The best solution, though, is to never use const char* for strings at all. You are correctly using std::string in your example, which will prevent this kind of problems and many others.
If you ever need a const char* (for C APIs for example) you can always use std::string::c_str and retrieve the C string version of the std::string.
Your example could be rewritten to:
int main(int, char*[]) {
std::string ss = "1234567890";
const char* data = ss.c_str();
std::cout << data << std::endl;
}
(in this particular instance, a version of std::ostream::operator<< that takes a std::string is already defined, so you don't even need data at all)

Counting Bytes Of Char S

I have a homework, It is:
Write the code of function below, this function should count number of bytes inside of s till it is not '\0'.
The function:
unsigned len(const char* s);
Really I do not know what this homework mean, can anyone write this homework's code please?
Further more can anyone please explain what does "Const char* s" mean? If you can explain with some examples it would be perfect.
Here is a code which I'm trying to do:
unsigned len(const char* s)
{
int count=0;; int i=0;
while (*(s+i)!=0)
{
count++;
i++;
}
return count;
}
But in the main function I do not know what should I write, BTW I have written this:
const char k='m';
const char* s=&k;
cout << len(s) << endl;
The result always is 4! really I do not know what should I do for this question, if I can store only one character in const char, so the result should be the same always. What this question is looking for exactly?
The homework means you should write a function that behaves like this:
int main() {
char s[] = {'a','b','c','\0'};
unsigned s_length = len(s);
// s_length will be equal to 3 ('a','b','c', not counting '\0')
}
I think it's unlikely that anyone will do you homework for you here.
Presumably your class has covered function parameters, pointers, and arrays if you're being asked to do this. So I guess you're asking about const. const char* s means that s points to a const char, which means you're not allowed to modify the char. That is, the following is illegal:
unsigned len(const char *s) {
*s = 'a'; // error, modifying a const char.
}
Here are the basic things you need to know about pointers to write the function. First, in this case the pointer is pointing at an element in an array. That is:
char A[] = {'a','b','c','\0'};
char const *s = &A[0]; // s = the address of A[0];
The pointer points to, or references, a char. To get that char you dereference the pointer:
char c = *s;
// c is now equal to A[0]
Because s points at an element of an array, you can add to and subtract from the pointer to access other elements of the array:
const char *t = s+1; // t points to the element after the one s points to.
char d = *t; // d equals A[1] (because s points to A[0])
You can also use the array index operator:
char c = s[0]; // c == A[0]
c = s[1]; // c == A[1]
c = s[2]; // c == A[2]
What would you used to look at each element of the array sequentially, with an increasing index?
Your proposed solution looks like it should work correctly. The reason you're getting a result of 4 is just coincidence. You could be getting any results at all. The problem with the way you're calling the function:
const char k='m';
const char* s=&k;
cout << len(s) << endl;
is that there's no '\0' guaranteed to be at the end. You need to make an array where one of the elements is 0:
const char k[] = { 1,2,3,0};
const char* s = &k[0];
cout << len(s) << '\n'; // prints 3
char m[] = { 'a', 'b', 'c', 'd', '\0', 'e', 'f'};
cout << len(m) << '\n'; // prints 4
char const *j = "Hello"; // automatically inserts a '\0' at the end
cout << len(j) << '\n'; // prints 5
In C (and by extension C++), strings can be represented as a sequence of characters terminated by a null character. So, the string "abc" would be represented as
'a', 'b', 'c', '\0'
This means, you can get the length of a C string by counting each character until you encounter a null. So if you have a null terminated const char* string, you can find out the length of that string by looping over the string and incrementing a counter variable until you find the '\0' character.
it means you have a string like hello world Every string terminates with a \0. That means it looks like this: hello world\0
Now step over the char array (char* s) until you find \0.
Update:
\0 is in fact only one single character of value 0x00. \ is used to tell visualize that this is meant instead of the number 0 in a string.
Example:
0abc\0 -> string starting with number 0 and is terminated with 0x0.
EDIT
char * indicates the type of the variable s. It is a pointer to a character array. const means that this character array is readonly and can't be changed.
Do you actually mean "count the characters till you find a '\0'"?
If so, you could implement it like this:
for each character
if it is not 0
increment x (where x is variable holding number of characters found)
otherwise
stop looking
return x
I am not going to write your homework as well :P, but let me give you some hint: it's called "pointer arithmetic". So, a pointer is a thing exactly just as it names says: a pointer to a memory "cell". As you know all variables in the memory are stored in "cells", that you can refer by an address. A C string is stored in continuous cells in the memory, so for example "abc" would look like something like (the '\0' is added by the compiler when you define a string literal with quotes):
+----+----+----+----+
|'a' |'b' |'c' |'\0'|
+----+----+----+----+
^
s
and you also get the address of the first char. Now, to get the address of 'b', you can simple add one to s like this: (s + 1). To get what is actually in the cell where s points to, you should use the * operator:
*s = 'a' or *(s + 1) = 'b'. This is called pointer arithmetic.
Note: in this case adding one to the pointer shifts to the next cell, because char is one byte long. If you define a pointer to bigger structure (long int for example of 4 bytes) adding one will move to the to the position in the memory where your next structure would begin (in case of long int it will move +4 bytes).
Now that should be enough help to finish your hw.
OK , I have found my answer, just check if I'm true:
#include <iostream>
using namespace std;
unsigned len(const char*);
int main()
{
const char* s = "Hello";
cout << len(s) << endl;
return 0;
}
unsigned len(const char* s)
{
int count=0;; int i=0;
while (*(s+i)!=0)
{
count++;
i++;
}
return count;
}
So it is showing that I have set "Hello" into const char* s; So for const char* variables I should use strings like "Hello" with the sign ("). Is that True?