I am trying to do a very basic form of encryption and decryption by using operations on ASCII characters in C. I have the following code:
char* myEncrypt(char* stringToEncrypt)
{
char *encryptedString = malloc(256);
strcpy(encryptedString, stringToEncrypt);
int publicKey = 50;
for (int i = 0; encryptedString[i] && encryptedString[i] != '\n'; ++i)
encryptedString[i] = (encryptedString[i] + publicKey) % 256;
return encryptedString;
}
My issue is that when I run this code I am every so often getting negative values for my integer values of the ASCII characters assigned to encryptedString[i]. This is causing the decryption to fail. Looking at the code there should be no way for me to get negative values since I am using the modulo operation. Am I missing something simple here?
Many implementations use signed characters for plain chars. If you need the characters to be unsigned, then you'll need to use unsigned char.
For example, if you have a char value of 100, and you add 50, you get 150. If CHAR_MAX value is 127 (typical), then you end up with an implementation-defined value being assigned back to your character -- most likely wrapping around to -106.
Also, in C, a negative value will still be negative after a modulo operation. For example: -50 % 256 is -50. So if your original string had characters that were less than -50, you would end up with negative values after adding 50 and taking modulo 256 as well.
Related
I'm making a function that takes a value using scanf_s and converts that into a binary value. The function works perfectly... until I put in a really high value.
I'm also doing this on VS 2019 in x64 in C
And in case it matters, I'm using
main(int argc, char* argv[])
for the main function.
Since I'm not sure what on earth is happening, here's the whole code I guess.
BinaryGet()
{
// Declaring lots of stuff
int x, y, z, d, b, c;
int counter = 0;
int doubler = 1;
int getb;
int binarray[2000] = { 0 };
// I only have to change things to 1 now, am't I smart?
int binappend[2000] = { 0 };
// Get number
printf("Gimme a number\n");
scanf_s("%d", &getb);
// Because why not
printf("\n");
// Get the amount of binary places to be used (how many times getb divides by 2)
x = getb;
while (x > 1)
{
d = x;
counter += 1;
// Tried x /= 2, gave me infinity loop ;(
x = d / 2;
}
// Fill the array with binary values (i.e. 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, etc)
for (b = 1; b <= counter; b++)
{
binarray[b] = doubler * 2;
doubler *= 2;
}
// Compare the value of getb to binary values, subtract and repeat until getb = 0)
c = getb;
for (y = counter; c >= 1; y--)
{
// Printing c at each subtraction
printf("\n%d\n", c);
// If the value of c (a temp variable) compares right to the binary value, subtract that binary value
// and put a 1 in that spot in binappend, the 1 and 0 list
if (c >= binarray[y])
{
c -= binarray[y];
binappend[y] += 1;
}
// Prevents buffer under? runs
if (y <= 0)
{
break;
}
}
// Print the result
for (z = 0; z <= counter; z++)
{
printf("%d", binappend[z]);
}
}
The problem is that when I put in the value 999999999999999999 (18 digits) it just prints 0 once and ends the function. The value of the digits doesn't matter though, 18 ones will have the same result.
However, when I put in 17 digits, it gives me this:
99999999999999999
// This is the input value after each subtraction
1569325055
495583231
495583231
227147775
92930047
25821183
25821183
9043967
655359
655359
655359
655359
131071
131071
131071
65535
32767
16383
8191
4095
2047
1023
511
255
127
63
31
15
7
3
1
// This is the binary
1111111111111111100100011011101
The binary value it gives me is 31 digits. I thought that it was weird that at 32, a convenient number, it gimps out, so I put in the value of the 32nd binary place minus 1 (2,147,483,647) and it worked. But adding 1 to that gives me 0.
Changing the type of array (unsigned int and long) didn't change this. Neither did changing the value in the brackets of the arrays. I tried searching to see if it's a limit of scanf_s, but found nothing.
I know for sure (I think) it's not the arrays, but probably something dumb I'm doing with the function. Can anyone help please? I'll give you a long-distance high five.
The problem is indeed related to the power-of-two size of the number you've noticed, but it's in this call:
scanf_s("%d", &getb);
The %d argument means it is reading into a signed integer, which on your platform is probably 32 bits, and since it's signed it means it can go up to 2³¹-1 in the positive direction.
The conversion specifiers used by scanf() and related functions can accept larger sizes of data types though. For example %ld will accept a long int, and %lld will accept a long long int. Check the data type sizes for your platform, because a long int and an int might actually be the same size (32 bits) eg. on Windows.
So if you use %lld instead, you should be able to read larger numbers, up to the range of a long long int, but make sure you change the target (getb) to match! Also if you're not interested in negative numbers, let the type system help you out and use an unsigned type: %llu for an unsigned long long.
Some details:
If scanf or its friends fail, the value in getb is indeterminate ie. uninitialised, and reading from it is undefined behaviour (UB). UB is an extremely common source of bugs in C, and you want to avoid it. Make sure your code only reads from getb if scanf tells you it worked.
In fact, in general it is not possible to avoid UB with scanf unless you're in complete control of the input (eg. you wrote it out previously with some other, bug free, software). While you can check the return value of scanf and related functions (it will return the number of fields it converts), its behaviour is undefined if, say, a field is too large to fit into the data type you have for it.
There's a lot more detail on scanf etc. here.
To avoid problems with not knowing what size an int is, or if a long int is different on this platform or that, there is also the header stdint.h which defines integer types of a specific width eg. int64_t. These also have macros for use with scanf() like SCNd64. These are available from C99 onwards, but note that Windows' support of C99 in its compilers is incomplete and may not include this.
Don't be so hard on yourself, you're not dumb, C is a hard language to master and doesn't follow modern idioms that have developed since it was first designed.
I would like to copy the contents of a char array to int variables or an array. For example, the first five values have to go to an int array (int x):
char a[] = "123456";
I saw in other threads that to change a char to an int, I need to do this:
int x = a[0] - '0';
Is there other ways of doing it?
What if I wanted to the values in groups of two or more, such as 12, 34 and 56?
And what if I didn't what to save them as ints, but floats or other types instead?
Copy properly sized portions of the string to a separate buffer and use strtol() or strtod().
You are on write track, however if you want to convert into integer array then you
should use something like
int x[MAX_ELEM];
for(int i =0; i<sizeof(a)/sizeof(char); i++)
{
x[i] = a[i] -'0';
}
For other cases you will need to deal separately.
The reason you have to do int x = a[0] - '0'; is because of the character encoding in C. What is happening is you are subtracting the encoding offset from the character. Here is a table with all the encoding values: UTF-8 encodings. So int x = a[0] - '0'; is equivalent in your case to int x = 49 - 48; which has the correct value you were looking for. By using '0' instead of 0 you are using the char value of 0.
There are other ways of doing it, but this way works well. To use other types, just do type casting after you create the int.
John's way of getting two digit numbers works well. Reposted here, it was number = 10 * digit1 + digit2.
To answer your questions:
Sure, there are other ways of doing it. The way you've shown converts the ASCII value to the digit it represents, but there are other ways.
Read in the number of characters you want, convert each character to a digit, and construct the integer from those digits like number = 10 * digit1 + digit2.
Do type casting after you construct the integers.
I got a set of characters as input using scanf which is actually like this "1854?156X".
(using scanf("%c",&input[i]) , input is an array of 10 characters);
In further processing of code I want to multiply the (first digit *10) & (second digit *9) and so on.
So, while multiplying it is taking the ASCII value of 1 which is actually (49 *10), instead of (1*10).
input[i]*counter;
where counter is
int counter=10;
How can I convert the char array to integer array where the exact digit should be multiplied instead of ascii value of that character?
If you know ahead of time that you value is ascii then simply subtract the value of '0' from it. E.g. '9' - '0' = 9'
Definitely use atoi(). It spares you a lot of manual character checking.
int input_val = atoi(input);
int temp = input_val;
while(temp)
{
int digit = temp % 10;
temp /= 10;
}
This gives you each digit from right to left in "digit". You can construct your number using addition and multiplying by powers of 10.
Take the ascii value and subtract 48.
That is input[i] - '0'
...or rather use atoi(). It returns zero if it fails on conversion, so you don't need to bother with '?' and such characters in your array while you traverse it.
Use strtol to convert these character strings into integral types.
It's superior to atoi because the failure modes are not ambiguous.
I am looking at the following piece of code:
void printd(int n)
{
if (n < 0) {
putchar('-');
n = -n;
}
if (n / 10)
printd(n / 10);
putchar(n % 10 + '0');
}
I understand the first if statement fine, but the second one has me confused on a couple of points.
By itself, since "n" is an integer, I understand that n/10 will shift the decimal point to the left once - effectively removing the last digit of the number; however, I am having a little trouble understanding how this can be a condition by itself without the result being equal to something. Why isn't the condition if ((n/10) >= 0) or something?
Also, why is the '0' passed into the putchar() call?
Can someone tell me how it would read if you were to read it aloud in English?
Thanks!
The n / 10 will evaluate to false if the result is 0, true otherwise. Essentially it's checking if n > 10 && n < -10 (the -10 doesn't come into play here due to the n = -n code)
The + '0' is for character offset, as characters '0'-'9' are not represented by numbers 0-9, but rather at an offset (48-57 with ascii).
Can someone tell me how it would read if you were to read it aloud in English?
If you're talking about the conditional, then I would say "if integer n divided by 10 is not zero"
n/10 will not shift the decimal number since n is an integer. The division will produce the result like this: if n = 25, then n/10 would be 2 (without any decimal points), similarly if n = 9, then n/10 would be 0 in which case if condition would not be satisfied.
Regarding the +'0', since n%10 produces an integer result and in putchar you are printing a char , you need to convert the integer to a char. This is done by adding the ascii value of 0 to the integer.
In C, there is no separate boolean type; an expression like a > b evaluates to zero if false, non-zero if true. Sometimes you can take advantage of this when testing for zero or non-zero in an int.
As for the '0', that just performs character arithmetic so that the right character is printed. The zero character has an ASCII encoding value which isn't zero, so the n value is used as an offset from that encoding to get the right numeric digit printed out.
I have a homework. The question is:
Write a function that takes as parameter a single integer, int input, and returns an unsigned character
such that:
a- if input is negative or larger than 11,111,111 or contains a digit that is not 0 or 1; then the function will
print an error message (such as “invalid input”) and return 0,
b- otherwise; the function will assume that the base-10 value of input represents a bit sequence and return the magnitude-only bit model correspondent of this sequence.
For Example: If input is 1011, return value is 11 and If input is 1110, return value is 14
This is my work for a, and I am stuck on b. How can I get bit sequence for given integer input?
int main()
{
int input = 0;
printf("Please type an integer number less than 11,111,111.\n");
scanf("%d",&input);
if(input < 0 || input > 11111111)
{
printf("Invalid Input\n");
system("PAUSE");
return 0;
}
for (int i = 0; i < 8; i++)
{
int writtenInput = input;
int single_digit = writtenInput%10;
if(single_digit == 0 || single_digit == 1)
{
writtenInput /= 10;
}
else
{
printf("Your digit contains a number that does not 0 or 1. it is invalid input\n");
system("PAUSE");
return 0;
}
}
printf("Written integer is %d\n",input);
system("PAUSE");
return 0;
}
The bit that you are missing is the base conversion. To interpret a number in base B, what you need to do is multiply digit N times B^N (assuming that you start counting digits from the least significative). For example, in base 16, A108 = (10)*16^3 + 1*16^2 + 0*16^1 + 8*16^0. Where in your base is 2 (binary).
Alternatively, you can avoid the exponentiation if you rewrite the expression as:
hex A008 = ((((10*16) + 1)*16 +0)*16 + 8
Which would be simpler if your input was stated in terms of an array of possibly unknown length as it is easily convertible into a loop of only additions and multiplications.
In the particular case of binary, you can use another direct solution, for each digit that is non-zero, set the corresponding bit in an integer type large enough (in your case, unsigned char suffices), and the value of the variable at the end of the loop will be the result of the conversion.
First off, the existing part of your code needs work. It doesn't report non-binary digits correctly. The question is "Are there any digits that are neither 0 nor 1". To answer this question in the negative, you need to check every single digit. Your code can terminate early. I also suggest renaming the function to something that clearly tells you what it does. For example haveNonBinaryDigit. The term check doesn't tell you what you should expect on the return value.
As for the second part, read up on the binary representation. It is fairly similar to decimal, except that instead of each digit being weighted by 1, 10, 100, .., 10^x, they are weighted by 1, 2, 4, ..., 2^n. Also the digits can only have values 0 and 1.
Your current code has a problem: it will terminate as soon as it finds one single binary bit (at the end) and call the entire integer correct.
I would take a different approach to this problem. What you want to do is get your hands on every single digit from the integer seperately. You made a good start in doing so by using modulo. Say you had this code:
for (int i = 0; i < 8; i++)
{
char single_digit = input%10;
input /= 10;
}
This makes it easy to start working with the digits. You would be checking 8 bits because that seems to be the maximum allowed (11,111,111). Check if each digit is either 0 or 1. Then you can start pushing it in to an unsigned character using bitwise operations. Shift every digit to the left by i, then use a bitwise OR.