Joining two characters in c++

Question

My requirement is to join two characters. For example

 int main()
 {
       char c1 ='0';
       char c2 ='4';
       char c3 = c1+c2;
       cout<< c3;
 }

The value which I am expecting is 04. But what I am getting is d. I know that char is single byte. My requirement is that in the single Byte of C3 is possible to merge/join/concat the c1,c2 and store the value as 04

Answer 1

A char is not a string. So you can first convert the first char to a string and than add the next ones like:

int main()
{
    char c1 ='0';
    char c2 ='4';
    auto c3 = std::string(1,c1)+c2;
    std::cout<< c3;
}

What is "magic" std::string(1,c1): It uses the std::string constructor of the form: std::string::string (size_t n, char c);. So it "fills" the string with one single character of your given c1 which is the 0.

If you add chars you get the result of adding the numeric value of it which is:

int main() {
    std::cout << (int)c1 << std::endl;
    std::cout << (int)c2 << std::endl;
    std::cout << (int)c1+c2 << std::endl;
    std::cout << char(c1+c2) << std::endl;
}

The numeric value as int from 0 is 48, from 4 it is 52. Add both you get 100. And 100 is a d in ascii coding.

Answer 2

What you want is called a string of characters. There are many ways to create that in C++. One way you can do it is by using the std::string class from the Standard Library:

char c1 = '0';
char c2 = '4';

std::string s; // an empty string

s += c1; // append the first character
s += c2; // append the second character

cout << s; // print all the characters out