strange problem, not sure what is wrong

This is code that is giving me trouble:

Code:

int main(void) {
const	char Off[] = "Off";
	Sensor *X = new Sensor("On", "near the front door");
	MainFrame *W = new MainFrame("Off");
	
	cout << "Sensor X is located " << X->GetLocation() << endl;
	cout << "Sensor X is currently " << X->GetSensorState() << endl;

The output from this code should be:
Sensor X is located near the front door (this works)
Sensor X is currently On

Instead I get:
Sensor X is located near the front door
Sensor X is currently Onnear the front door

This is the function GetSensorState:

Code:

inline	char *GetSensorState()  { return State; }

All it does is return State which is a protected character array. State is defined as
char State[2] (only meant to hold 'On' or 'Off' so i figured 2 is enough)

The function GetLocation is:

Code:

 inline	char *GetLocation()  { return itsLocation; }

All GetLocation does is return itsLocation which is a protected character array that describes the location of the sensor
itsLocation is defined as:
char itsLocation[50];

I am honestly not sure what is wrong here, this is quite strange.

> (only meant to hold 'On' or 'Off' so i figured 2 is enough)

Well "Off" requires 4 counting the \0

what do you mean counting the \0? and how could that cause my problem?

Character arrays are terminated by '\0'. "off" is three characters, plus the terminating null character, so you need [4] in your char array.

char State[2] holds two char's, not two C-strings, i.e. "on"/"off". There's no provision for the terminating '\0' character in either case.

The compiler reads data from an array until the '\0' char is found and terminates the read. Even a full array must end with '\0'.

Note that the compiler will both "overwrite" and "overread" your array boundaries. Not a good thing since you can corrupt memory contiguous to your array if the former occurs and read absolute garbage in the case of the latter.

Initializing 'State' to [4] allocates space for the '\0' char provided nothing longer than "off" is written to the array.

-Skipper

re-read my problem please
it only doesn't work in one part of my program, but works in another part.
I don't know if the character array is causing my problem (I don't think it is)

plus i am going to try rewriting the same program using strings

I agree I think the problem is your getssensorstate string, It can only hold 1 letter and a null terminating character that is how it knows the stribng has come to an end, if you just up this to 4 then it will allow you to hold 'o' 'n' '\0' and 'o' 'f' 'f' '\0', if the function is trying to return a string that is too short then I think it could cause trouble.

yes changing it to 4 works