Question

I picked up this bit of code a while back as a way to select a random line from a text file and output the result. Unfortunately, it only seems to output the first letter of the line that it selects and I can’t figure out why its doing so or how to fix it. Any help would be appreciated.

#include "stdafx.h"
#include <stdio.h>
#include <iostream>
#include <fstream>
#include <string>
#include <time.h>
using namespace std;

#define MAX_STRING_SIZE 1000

string firstName()
{
    string firstName;
    char str[MAX_STRING_SIZE], pick[MAX_STRING_SIZE];
    FILE *fp;
    int readCount = 0;

    fp = fopen("firstnames.txt", "r");
    if (fp)
    {
        if (fgets(pick, MAX_STRING_SIZE, fp) != NULL)
        {
            readCount = 1;
            while (fgets (str, MAX_STRING_SIZE, fp) != NULL)
            {
                if ((rand() % ++readCount) == 0)
                {
                    strcpy(pick, str);
                }
            }
        }
    }
    fclose(fp);
    firstName = *pick;
    return firstName;
}

int main() 
{
    srand(time(NULL));

    int n = 1;
    while (n < 10)
    {
        string fn = firstName();
        cout << fn << endl;
        ++n;
    }

    system("pause");
}

Answer 1

 firstName = *pick;

I am guessing this is the problem.

pick here is essentially a pointer to the first element of the array, char*, so of course *pick is of type char.. or the first character of the array.

Another way to see it is that *pick == *(pick +0) == pick[0]

There are several ways to fix it. Simplest is to just do the below.

return pick;

The constructor will automatically make the conversion for you.