Re: toUpper and pointer to a string

From:
Daniel Kay <daniel-kay2@arcor.de>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++
Date:
Sat, 22 Sep 2007 20:13:37 +0200
Message-ID:
<46f55b4c$0$7687$9b4e6d93@newsspool2.arcor-online.net>
Neelesh Bodas schrieb:

On Sep 22, 10:45 pm, Daniel Kay <daniel-k...@arcor.de> wrote:

Neelesh Bodas schrieb:

On Sep 22, 9:31 pm, gaga <baronessfrostb...@gmail.com> wrote:

my function should accept a pointer to a string as its argument. and
it should convert each charater to an uppercase letter. I know what i
need to do, its just my syntax is all out of whack.
void strUpper (char *myStr) {
        int i;
        strcpy (*myStr);

char myCopy[100]; //sufficiently large
strcpy(myCopy, myStr);

Always a bad idea...


Completely Agreed. but I think there is always a need of writing this
kind of code. For example, the strUpper you suggested (or the OP tried
to write) cannot be used in the following case:

int main()
{
   strToUpper("helloworld");
}

Worse, there is nothing that stops you from writing such a code (The
non-const nature of parameter doesn't hints at it though). In such a
case, probably creating a local variable to copy the argument is the
only option.


If somebody would force me to write a function in C (what I try to avoid
in any way), which will not modify the input string, I would start with
the following declaration:

void strToUpper(const char* in, char* out);

The user can decide to modify the original string:

char str1[] = "hello";
strToUpper(str1, str1);

Or the user can copy the result into a new string:

char str1[] = "hello";
char str2[sizeof(str1)] = { 0 };
strToUpper(str1, str2);

I hope this is true, since I didn't compile it... :-)

2. Better, use std::string class and std::transform. Something like
this:
void strUpper (string s)
{
     string t;
     transform(s.begin(), s.end(), back_inserter(t), (int(*)
(int))toupper);
}

This function will not change anything, unless the function retrieves a
pointer or even better a reference to a std::string.


Ok, one can have
string strUpper (const string& s); //returns the local variable t by
value
or
void strUpper(string& s); //no need of local variable, transform the
argument

The central idea was to suggest that std::string is much safer to use
than char*.


Ok, just wanted to make sure that uses copy/paste with that function and
wonders why the string isn't changed like the original poster intended
to do.

--
Cya,
Daniel

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