While statement with getline and strcmp to break

Hey All,

Can someone please have a look at my code below. its the while statement in particular that i'm a little confused about. i've used strcmp to compare the text retrieved from getline to break out the while loop.

if(strcmp(input_text , "@@@"))
break;

However, regardless of what i type it breaks out of the while loop.

If i change the statement to

if(strlen(input_text) == 0)
break;

It works a treat and breaks out when i dont type anything.

Code below

Code:

#include "file.h"
using namespace std;
#define MAX_PATH 99
int main()
{
	char file_path[99];
	char file_name[99];
	char file_extension[9] = ".txt";
	char file[99];
	char input_text[199];



	cout << "Where would you like to store your file: ";
	cin.getline(file_path, MAX_PATH);
	cout << "What would you like to call the file: ";
	cin.getline(file_name, MAX_PATH);

	strcpy(file, file_path);
	strcat(file, file_name);
	strcat(file, file_extension);

	ofstream fout(file);

	if(!fout)
	{
		cout << "Invalid file" << endl;
		return -1;
	}
	cout << "You are now editing the document" << endl;
	while(true)
	{
		cout << "Please type <@@@> to exit";
		cin.getline(input_text, 199);
		if(strcmp(input_text, "@@@"))
			break;
		else
			fout << input_text << endl;
	}
	system("pause");
}

strcmp() returns zero if the strings compare equal. Your code is breaking out if they are not equal.

It would probably be a good idea to check the state of cin, in case an error occurs.

Also, it would be a good idea if the length of file was > 99: strcat()ing strings of length 99 potentially yields a string with length more than 99. There are generally also delimiters in paths (for examples, slashes) that your code should enter if the user does not.

Perhaps you should consider using std::string for all your input. It would avoid all the buffer overflow issues you have at the moment.

Then at the point you NEED a char array of some sort, you do this

Code:

ofstream fout(file.c_str());

Yeah, i much prefer std::string to c-string. But the book i'm following is being persistent with the old c style strings. So i'll stick with it for the moment, i think.

Grumpy, some good tips. thanks