Re: how dodgy are these examples of char array use

From:

"Daniel T." <postmaster@verizon.net>

Newsgroups:

comp.lang.c++

Date:

Tue, 23 May 2006 10:53:45 GMT

Message-ID:

<postmaster-0EBE78.06543423052006@news.west.earthlink.net>

In article <1148377618.436559.241610@38g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,
"voidtwerp" <voidtwerp@gmail.com> wrote:

showing my extreme ignorance I would like comments how the char arrays
are used here, ie are these valid or dangerous uses (the reason I ask
is because constructs like these occur in some code I am looking at).

All three are somewhat "dodgy" because 'p' is a char* when it should be
a const char*. Also, the exceptions are quite "dodgy" IMO unless they
denote actual error conditions (ie something you couldn't have checked
beforehand.)

#include <iostream>
#include <stdlib.h>

using namespace std;

class C
{
    public:
    C();
    void f1();
    private:
    char* f2();
    void f3();
};

C::C(){}
void C::f1()
{
    char * p;
    int i=3;
    while(i--)
    {
        try
        {
                switch (i)
                {
                case 2:
                   p="is this dodgy?";
                   throw 1;
                   break;
                case 1:
                   p=f2();
                   throw 2;
                   break;
                case 0:
                   f3();
                   break;
                default:
                   cout << "ERK!" << endl;
                }
        }
        catch(char * v)
        {
                cout << v << endl;
        }
        catch(int e)
        {
                cout << p << endl;
        }
        catch(...)
        {
                cout << "ERK2!!" << endl;
        }
    }
}

char* C::f2()
{
    char * v = "how dodgy is this?";
    return v;
}

void C::f3()
{
    char *v="is this any better/worse?";
    throw v;
}

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
  C c;
  c.f1();
  system("PAUSE");
  return 0;
}