string display error

[rabbitysun]

i wrote the code to set the string to be 512 ending with '\0'.
when i tried to cout the string , it goes like this Image on Google Docs

what can i do to remove the huge spaces?

this is the code

#include <iostream>
#include <algorithm>
#include <string>
using namespace std;
 
 
std::string* DocumentLexAndNorm(std::string& document, unsigned int& numberOfWords)
{
    unsigned int numWordsOutput=0;
    int counter=0;
    for (int i=0; i<document.size(); i++)
    {    
 
        if (isalpha(document[i]))
        {
            if (counter>0)
                continue;
            if (counter==0)
                {numWordsOutput++;
            counter++;}
        }
 
        switch (document[i])
        {
        case ' ':
        case '\t':
        case ',':
        case '.':
        case ';':
        case ':':
        case '\'':
        case '\"':
        case '?':
            counter=0;
        }
    }
 
    std::string* retVal = new std::string[numWordsOutput];
    for (unsigned int i=0; i<numWordsOutput; i++)
        retVal[i]= std::string(512, '\0');
    int newNumWordsOutput=0;
        int newCounter=0;
 
    for (int i= 0, x=0,z=0; (i<numWordsOutput) &&(x<document.size()); x++)
    {    
 
 
 
string temp;
 
 
 
 
temp = "";
 
 
        if (isalpha(document[x]))
        {
 
            if (newCounter>0)
            {
                    if ((document[x]<=90)&&(document[x]>=65))
                        {retVal[i][z]+=document[x]+32;
 
                    z++;}
                    else {retVal[i][z]+=document[x];
 
                    z++;}
                    continue;
            }
 
            if (newCounter==0)
            {    
                newNumWordsOutput++;
                newCounter++;
                if ((document[x]<=90)&&(document[x]>=65))
                {retVal[i][z]+=document[x]+32;z++;}
                else {retVal[i][z]+=document[x];z++;
                }
 
            }
 
        }
 
        switch (document[x])
        {
        case ' ':
        case '\t':
        case ',':
        case '.':
        case ';':
        case ':':
        case '\'':
        case '\"':
        case '?':
            {newCounter=0;
            z=0;
            if (isalpha(document[x-1]))
                i++;
            break;}
        }
 
 
 
    }
    numberOfWords = numWordsOutput;
    return retVal;
}
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
int main()
{
    //string n1[]={ "teacher", "teacher", "Teacher2"};
    //string n2[]={ "teacher11", "teacher1", "STUDNET22"};
    //unsigned int q=3;
    //unsigned int p[]={2,3,4};
    //cout << transformCriteria(p,n1,n2,q)<< endl; cout << n2[2]<<endl;
    std::string document = "I'm sad that my 2 brand-new Mercedes S550s were stolen on March 13, 2012!!";
unsigned int nb_words = 0;
std::string* doc = DocumentLexAndNorm(document, nb_words);
for (unsigned int i = 0; i < nb_words; ++i)
   std::cout << "word #" << i << ": " << doc[i];
std::cout << std::endl;
// Free the array created at the end of the program.
 
 
}
 
 

[Banfa]

At line 40 you make every string 512 characters long. the C++ string class does not use '\0' as a terminator (necessarily) and so your output strings are actually all 512 bytes long, it looks like '\0' is then being output as a space.

If you took advantage of the find_first_of and find_first_not of members of string then you could probably make your algorithm simpler.

If you use a vector to output the results instead of an allocated array you could make the split in a single pass of the string instead of 2 passes.

If you used the features of string, like push_back, you would not have to initialise the output strings at all.