Using "getchar()" help! HELP HELP HELP

[renatodd]

Okay. I am VERY new at c++, and have just learned in class about arrays and strings.

This is the problem.

I am asked to get a word from the user, and output the length of it.

The part I am having trouble with is the input. This is what I have:

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

int main()
{
	char user_input[100];
	int x = 0;
	
	cout << "== String Length ==" << endl;
	cout << "Enter a word:" << endl;
	
	for(char new_char = getchar(); new_char != '\n'; new_char = getchar())
	{
		user_input[x] = new_char;
		x++;
	}  //this is how I was told to get input.
	
	cout << user_input << endl;
	
}

but when the user inputs anything less than four characters, it outputs the first few and then gibberish. Can someone tell me why this is happening? In REALLY SIMPLE words?

[shacktar]

//this is how I was told to get input.

Well, the first thing I was going to comment on is getline will get a word for you no problem. Also, it's a really weird loop. I did a double take before I understood what was going on.

This would be more understandable, I find:

char new_char;

do
{
     new_char = getchar();

     if(new_char != '\n')
     {
          user_input[x++] = new_char;
     }
} while(new_char != '\n');

OK, now on to the real problem.

but when the user inputs anything less than four characters, it outputs the first few and then gibberish.

When I ran it there was gibberish even if I put four or more characters. The gibberish is there because when cout prints a char array or char*, it keeps printing until it sees the null terminator character '\0' (ASCII 0). This tells it when the printing is finished.

After the loop, you should put user_input[x] = '\0'; and then there will be no garbage printed out. This of course assumes that x <= 99 upon termination of the loop.

[lnk2019]

Why don't you use the string class? Is there a requirement that say's you must use getchar()?

You can store string data, and there is a method that returns the number of characters contained within that string, without the fuss of null characters and so on (and it will look prettier).

//code omitted
#include <string>

using std::string;

int main()
{
    string myString;
    
    cin>>myString;
    cout<<"my string is: " <<myString.length() <<" characters in length!" <<endl;

    //code omitted
}

The documentation you need is here: http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/string/string/

You can use this method to get the number of characters contained within the string: http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/string/string/length/

I hope this helps!