CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c++
user2385273
user2385273

Reputation: 45

Trying to Cout the return of a function

I'm new to C++ and I'm having trouble with this code:

string output_date(int day, int month, int year){
    string date;
    if ((day > 0 && day <= 30) && (month > 0 && month <= 12) && (year >= 2013)){
        switch (month){
          case 1: date = day + " JAN " + year; break;
          case 2: date = day + " FEB " + year; break;
          case 3: date = day + " MAR " + year; break;
          case 4: date = day + " APR " + year; break;
          case 5: date = day + " MAY " + year; break;
          case 6: date = day + " JUN " + year; break;
          case 7: date = day + " JUL " + year; break;
          case 8: date = day + " AUG " + year; break;
          case 9: date = day + " SEP " + year; break;
          case 10: date = day + " OCT " + year; break;
          case 11: date = day + " NOV " + year; break;
          case 12: date = day + " DEC " + year; break;
        }
    }
    return date;
}

when I try and do:

cout << output_date(22,12,2013);

nothing comes up. What am i doing wrong?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 128

Answers (2)

kotlomoy
kotlomoy

Reputation: 1430

  • What am i doing wrong?

First thing you doing wrong is not using debugger.

Second thing you doing wrong is adding integers to string literal. For example, " DEC " is a string literal which has pointer type char const *. Result of expression

day + " DEC " + year

is a char const * pointer pointing to unknown area of memory. In your case this unknown area was filled with zeroes, that's why you got empty string of type char const * as result. (This was my case too, when I ran your program in debugger)

You assigned this empty string to data, that's why you got empty output.

Upvotes: 0

Syntactic Fructose
Syntactic Fructose

Reputation: 20076

I would recommend using stringstream and returning a string from the stream:

stringstream date;
    if ((day > 0 && day <= 30) && (month > 0 && month <= 12) && (year >= 2013)){
        switch (month){
          case 1: date << day << " JAN " << year; break;
          case 2: date << day << " FEB " << year; break;
          //yadda yadda.....
        }
    }
return date.str();

for this you need to include the header<sstream>

Upvotes: 5

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