dyanamic strings in c++ help, how do i erase the last letter on a buffer?

ie, char *buffer;

buffer contains "hello";

i would like to erase the letter 'o',
how would i do that?

thanks,

can't you do

Code:

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strcat(buffer,"\b");

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? I have never tried this so...

Why not just replace the last character with a " "?

wow, it worked hehe, inserting a ' '; :) thanks guys!

well i guess strcat would work too,

Code:

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int count;
//finds end of string
for(count  = 0 ; buffer[counter] ; count++)
;//required
count--;//set count to last character
buffer[count] = '\0'; //overwrite last character

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this requires a null terminated string and will leave an extra null character at the end of the string. Since it is dynamic, you could create a new array first, do the change & copy, then delete the first array

this is a bit faster:
buffer[strlen(buffer) - 1] = ' ';
not sure if you need the "- 1" part because i dont know if strlen counts the at the end of the string as part of the string. also, i dunno if strlen works around zero or one, so try both.
hope i didnt just confuse you :).

lol! i have no idea why i said to use a loop instead of strlen...
you should subtract 1 from strlen

I don't think you need the -1 when using strlen because it doesn't count the null character . strlen("hello") should return 5 instead of 6.

you do because arrays start with 0 instead of 1

just dont wright the "o" ;)

buffer[strlen(buffer) - 1] = ' ';

what happens when strlen(buffer)==0?

spell check wriiting i keep forgeting

Quote:

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Originally posted by rip1968
buffer[strlen(buffer) - 1] = ' ';

what happens when strlen(buffer)==0?

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compiler won't give an error, but you will still be writing to memory. This almost always cause an error when the program is run.

len=strlen(buffer);
if(len!=0)
buffer[len-1]='\0';


you're right, you do have to subtract 1 to get to the right index, I was just thinking about returning the size of buffer.