Concatenating various datatype variables into another variable

Hi,

I'm only a few days new to C programming as well as programming in general and am trying to write a program that generates a random password that is 2 characters, 3 numbers and 2 characters. I am able to get the output into a printf statement, am not able to get the variables to concatenate into one. I keep getting pointer without a cast errors

What I have so far is below & any help would be greatly appreciated. (I'm using Cygwin, but the target for this will be SCO Unix 7.1 (Unixware) with C.)

Thanks,

Sam

-------------------------------
#include <stdio.h>
#include <time.h>
#include <strings.h>

int main()
{
int p, a, s, w;
int num;
char p1, p2, p3, p4;
char password[7];

srand(time(0));
p = 98 + rand()%25;
p1 = (char)p;

srand(time(0)+1);
a = 98 + rand()%25;
p2 = (char)a;

srand(time(0)+2);
s = 98 + rand()%25;
p3 = (char)s;

srand(time(0)+3);
w = 98 + rand()%25;
p4 = (char)w;

srand(time(0));
num = 100 + rand()%900;

strcpy(password, p1);
strcat(password, p2);
strcat(password, num);
strcat(password, p3);
strcat(password, p4);

printf ("%c%c%d%c%c\n", p1, p2, num, p3, p4); /*testing only, really want output in password variable for use by another program*/

printf ("%c", password);

return 0;
}

Just use the sprintf function:

Code:

---

char password[8]; /* need extra space for  \0 character */

sprintf(password, "%c%c%d%c%c\n", p1, p2, num, p3, p4);

printf("%s\n", password);

---

Small correction: the \n in the sprintf function in my previous post must be removed.

Here a reduced version:

Code:

---

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <time.h>

int main()
{
  char password[8];

  srand((unsigned)time(NULL));

  sprintf(password, "%c%c%.3d%c%c",
          98+rand()%25,
          98+rand()%25,
          rand()%1000,
          98+rand()%25,
          98+rand()%25);

    printf ("%s", password);

    return 0;
}

---

Thanks Monster!

I appreciate your time and effort to help a stranger. I see from what you wrote, that as one gets more comfortable with C, the level of meaningful context for the code can become very compact.

-Sam

No problem Sam, we enjoy helping strangers...

Once you get more comfortable with C you'll see that there are many different ways to solve your problem. Finding the best way is what makes you a good programmer (I think).

Making your code compact can be nice, but making it too compact can make your core realy messy and unreadable by other programmers. The chalenge is to find the perfect balance between those two.

Cheers,
Monster

Wandering slightly OT for this thread, but I mentioning it anyway... don't forget that this method of getting random numbers isn't very good:
rand()%1000

Read it here.