Get mm dd yyyy from user input

Question

This is a really simple program I have to make but I'm going blank on how to do it.

Basically the user inputs the date in the from mm/dd/yyyy and all I have to do is separate the values and output them on separate lines.

This is what i have so far:

int main ()
{
    char cMonth[2];
    char cDay [2];
    char cYear[4];

    cout << "Enter a date in the form mm/dd/yyy: " ;

    cin.get(cMonth,3,'/');
    cin.ignore(2,'/');
    cin.get(cDay, 4, '/');
    cin.ignore(2,'/');
    cin.get(cYear, 5);

    cout << cMonth << endl << cDay << endl << cYear << endl;
    return 0;
}

My program compiles but when it runs it gives wrong output, for example if i put 04/13/2013 the output will be:

0413
13
2013

Answer 1

The problem is that your char buffers aren't big enough to hold the null terminator, so you're writing the null terminator past the end of the buffer. In the case of cMonth and cDay, this apparently causes them to run into each other because they are stored adjacently on the stack (don't rely on that behaviour!)

You need to make them at least one byte longer, i.e. 3, 3, and 5 bytes long. Be aware that your code is vulnerable to a buffer overflow; you may want to adjust your .get parameters so that they can't possibly overflow the buffers, or make the buffers longer.