Question

I am trying to get user input and put it into an array of cstrings separated by a space. When I print the array to the screen though I get nothing. I am sure I am doing something stupid, but I have been stuck trying different ways for a while. Any help would be appreciated. Here is the code.

#include <iostream>
#include <cstring>

using namespace std;

void stuff(char command[][25], int length)
{
    char ch;


    for(int i = 0; i < length; i ++)
    {
        int b = 0;
        cin.get(ch);
        while(!isspace(ch))
        {
            command[i][b++] = ch;
            cin.get(ch);
        }

        command[i][b] = '\0';
        cout << endl;
    }


}

int main()
{
    char cha[10][25];
    char ch;
    int len = 0;
    while(ch != '\n')
    {
        cin.get(ch);
        if(isspace(ch))
            {
                len++;
            }
    }
    stuff(cha,len);
    for(int i = 0; i < len; i++)
    {
        cout << cha[i] << endl;
    } 
    cout << len << endl;

    return 0;
}

Answer 1

a) ch is undefined when you first test it with while (ch != '\n'). Initialize it to zero or something.

b) You don’t write any values into cha in the while loop. Perhaps something like:

int pos = 0;
while(ch != '\n') {
    cin.get(ch);
    if (isspace((unsigned)ch)) {
       if (pos > 0) {
           ++len;
           pos = 0;
       }
    }
    else {
       cha[len][pos] = ch;
       ++pos;
    }
}

c) You are reading the stream again in stuff(...) but have already consumed what you wanted to get from the stream in main().

d) This code suffers from a number of buffer overrun and stack corruption opportunities. perhaps use a std::vector<std::string> instead. If it runs out of memory it will throw an exception rather than make a mess on the stack.
Perhaps something like this (untested):

#include <iostream>
#include <string>
#include <vector>

using namespace std;

void main()
{
    typedef std::vector<std::string> strvec;
    strvec cha;
    std::string s;
    char ch = 0;
    while(ch != '\n') {
        cin.get(ch);
        if (isspace((unsigned)ch)) {
            if (!s.empty()) {
                cha.push_back(s);
                s.clear();
            }
        }
        else {
            s.push_back(ch);
        }
    }
    // don't need to call 'stuff' to null terminate.
    for (strvec::iterator i = cha.begin(); i != cha.end(); ++i) {
        cout << *i << endl;
    }
    cout << cha.size() << endl;
}

This could be a little more efficient than it is but hopefully it is easy to understand.