C/C++ Practice Questions on User Input Problem 13

This is my series on C/C++ problems for accepting user input in a robust way. The questions of this series start from C programs, and they slowly build and convert to classes, and which further build into inheritance. This is Problem 13 of this series.

Last Reviewed and Updated on February 7, 2020
Posted by Parveen(Hoven),
Aptitude Trainer and Software Developer

User Input - Problem 13

Use the base class created in Problem 11 to perform unsigned long input. It should ask the user to enter an integer in the range 0 <= x <= ULONG_MAX, validate the input and display the result.

Solution
// include all the headers
#include "conio.h"
#include "limits.h"
#include "errno.h"
#include
<iostream>

class CConsoleBase
{

public:
    // the maximum limit allowed, use a static const
    // initialize here itself
    static const int iMAXCHARS = 12;

protected:
    char m_cBuff [iMAXCHARS + 3 +
    /*take two more so that overflow can be detected*/2];

    char* m_cReturn;

    // add a temporary storage to hold a copy of input string
    // while the cleanup takes place
    char m_cTemp [iMAXCHARS + 3 +
    /*take two more so that overflow can be detected*/2];

    // the length of string entered by the user.
    // this length is required during cleanup when
    // we flush the unwanted characters. so we make it
    // a private member
    int m_iInputLength;

public:
    // constructor
    CConsoleBase ()
    {

        // requirement for _cgets
        m_cBuff [0] = (iMAXCHARS + 2) + 1;

    }

protected:
    // returns success if the user enters a string <= 10 chars
    bool ReadConsoleString ()
    {

        m_cReturn = NULL;

        int iLoopCtr = 0;

        m_cReturn = _cgets (m_cBuff);

        // save length in a variable. Why are we saving it ?
        m_iInputLength = strlen (m_cReturn);

        // save console input on the temp for cleanup later
        strcpy (this->m_cTemp, this->m_cReturn);

        // Robust programming -
        // remove unwanted, unread characters from the stream
        // following is required on C-Compiler ?
        //if (iMAXCHARS == m_iInputLength) _cgets (m_cBuff);

        do
        {

            m_cReturn = _cgets (m_cBuff);

        }while (0 != m_cReturn [0]);

        // now write back to m_cReturn, the value of m_cTemp
        strcpy (this->m_cReturn, this->m_cTemp);

        return (m_iInputLength <= iMAXCHARS);

    }

};

class CConsoleULong : public CConsoleBase
{

    unsigned long m_iIntValue;

public:
    inline bool TakeIntInput ()
    {

        // read console
        bool bRet = ReadConsoleString ();

        if (bRet)
        {

            // validate
            // if the user has not entered a proper string
            // we should say it is an error, we are taking
            // the length = 10 but for 64-bit systems
            // this won't work because INT_MAX could be
            // longer
            if ((('+' == m_cReturn [0])
            &&
            11 < m_iInputLength)
            ||
            (10 < m_iInputLength)
            ||
            (0 == m_iInputLength)
            ||
            ('-' == m_cReturn [0])
            )
            {

                bRet = false;

            }

            // now check each digit, do checking so
            // long as iRet != -1
            for (int iLoopCtr = 0;

            iLoopCtr < m_iInputLength && bRet; iLoopCtr++)
            {

                // if the user enters a sign,
                // we should ignore it
                // in our validation. our purpose is
                // to check for valid numbers
                if (('-' == m_cReturn [0])
                ||
                ('+' == m_cReturn [0]))
                continue;

                if (!isdigit (m_cReturn [iLoopCtr]))
                {

                    bRet = false;

                }

            }

            if (bRet)
            {

                // now verify if the number is
                // within the range. the range as
                // you can see is ULONG_MAX. so
                char* end;

                m_iIntValue =
                strtoul (m_cReturn, &end, 10);

                // atoi sets errno to ERANGE if
                // out of range occurs
                // the header errno.h is include
                // at the top for this
                if (ERANGE == errno)
                {

                    bRet = false;

                    _set_errno (0);

                }

            }

        }

        return bRet;

    }

    inline unsigned long DisplayIntInput ()
    {

        return this->m_iIntValue;

    }

};

int main ()
{

    CConsoleULong obj;

    printf ("Enter a number in the range 0 to %lu: ", ULONG_MAX);

    if (obj.TakeIntInput ())
    {

        printf ("You entered '%lu'\n", obj.DisplayIntInput ());

    }

    else
    {

        printf ("Invalid Input\n");

    }

    return 0;

}


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This Blog Post/Article "C/C++ Practice Questions on User Input Problem 13" by Parveen (Hoven) is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Updated on 2020-02-07. Published on: 2015-12-20