Question

I was trying to write a program that stores the message in a string backwards into a character array, and whenever I run it sometimes it successfully writes it backwards but other times it will add random characters to the end like this:

input: write this backwards

sdrawkcab siht etirwˇ

#include <iostream>
#include <string>
using namespace std;

int main()
{
 string message;
 getline(cin, message);
 int howLong = message.length() - 1;
 char reverse[howLong];
 for(int spot = 0; howLong >= 0; howLong--)
 {
   reverse[spot] = message.at(howLong);
   spot++;
 }
 cout << reverse;
 return 0;
}

Answer 1

The buffer reverse needs to be message.length() + 1 in length so that it can store a null termination byte. (And the null termination byte needs to be placed in the last position in that buffer.)