Broken C string code

[jshafferman]

I am going through an old C++ book for fun and doing all the exercises to refresh some C++ concept I have forgotten or haven't used in a long time. So with that being said I am doing a simple card evaluating program and my program keeps crashing and I am unsure as to why. My guess is I am miss using some <cstring> commands but I can't see where I am missing something. The program crashes randomly and it appears to happen right after two hands have been dealt. FYI if I don't cout the hand it crashes everytime :(. Here is all the relevant code:

// in the main before call to deal
const char *suit[4] = {"Hearts", "Diamonds", "Clubs", "Spades"};

const char *face[13] = {"Ace", "Deuce", "Three", "Four", "Five", "Six", "Seven", "Eight", "Nine",
			                "Ten", "Jack", "Queen", "King"};
// ... end main

void deal(int wDeck[][13], const char *wFace[], const char *wSuit[])
{
     char hand[2][5][15] = {{""}};

	for(int handNumber = 0; handNumber < 2; handNumber++)
	{
		for(int cardNumber = 1; cardNumber <= 5; cardNumber++)
		{
			int row = rand() % 4;
			int column = rand() % 13;

			while(wDeck[row][column] == 0)
			{
				row = rand() % 4;
				column = rand() % 13;
			}

			wDeck[row][column] = 0;

			char description[14] = "";

			strcat(description, wFace[column]);
			strcat(description, " ");
			strcat(description, wSuit[row]);

			strcpy(hand[handNumber][cardNumber - 1], description);
			
			cout << hand[handNumber][cardNumber - 1] << endl;
		}

		cout << "=======================\n";
	}
}

The second cout << "=================\n" never runs so it appears to be somewhere above that, however the hand is displayed find using the cout statement. Any help would be greatly appreciated, also I am aware that some of my code could be dated as this book is fairly old. Thanks for the help!

[Peter87]

Looks like the description array is too small. If the face is "Queen" and suit is "Diamonds".
5 (face) + 1 (space) + 8 (suit) + 1 (null terminator) = 15, so the description array needs to be at least 15 characters.

[jlb]

You may also want to consider replacing your "magic numbers" with constants, then use this constant instead of the "magic number". For example

const int Num_suits = 4;
const char *suit[Num_suits] = {"Hearts", "Diamonds", "Clubs", "Spades"};

[jshafferman]

Ah damn null terminator!! I miss counted my numbers because I thought 15 was long enough lol. Thanks Peter87!

To jbl:
I am aware that constants are better for larger programs and make the code easier to read, I usually don't make those mistakes in actual programs but still shouldn't skip it just because this is a personal exercise ;).

Thanks to you both

[Sadegh2007]

use this code to successfully compile.
I use time to randomness deal every compile

sorry for my english

#include <iostream>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <cstring>
#include <ctime>

using namespace std;

void deal(int wDeck[][13], const char *wFace[], const char *wSuit[]);

// in the main before call to deal
const char *suit[4] = {"Hearts", "Diamonds", "Clubs", "Spades"};

const char *face[13] = {"Ace", "Deuce", "Three", "Four", "Five", "Six", "Seven", "Eight", "Nine",
			                "Ten", "Jack", "Queen", "King"};
// ... end main

int main (int argc,char ** argv)
{
	time_t t= time(NULL);

	int wDeck[4][13];
	srand(t);
	for (int i = 0; i < 4; i++){
		for (int j=0; j < 13; j++){
			wDeck[i][j] = rand();
		}
	}
	deal(wDeck, face, suit);
	return 0;
}

void deal(int wDeck[][13], const char *wFace[], const char *wSuit[])
{
     char hand[2][5][15] = {{""}};

	for(int handNumber = 0; handNumber < 2; handNumber++)
	{
		for(int cardNumber = 1; cardNumber <= 5; cardNumber++)
		{
			int row = rand() % 4;
			int column = rand() % 13;

			while(wDeck[row][column] == 0)
			{
				row = rand() % 4;
				column = rand() % 13;
			}

			wDeck[row][column] = 0;

			char description[14] = "";


			strcat(description, wFace[column]);
			strcat(description, " ");
			strcat(description, wSuit[row]);

			strcpy(hand[handNumber][cardNumber - 1], description);

			cout << hand[handNumber][cardNumber - 1] << endl;
		}

		cout << "=======================\n";
	}
}