creating a structure and displaying them

Question

Date *date_create(char *datestr);  
struct datestr { 
    int date; 
    int month; 
    int year;  
} 

char *datestr = (char*)malloc(sizeof(char)*size);

date_create creates a data structure from datestr
datestr is expected to be of the form "dd/mm/yyyy"

Basically I'm having some problems with the create portion i need some help in creating let's say an input 02/11/2013 and then this data will be added into the pointer and then i have to display them in terms of blocks such as 02 for date, 11 for month and 2013 for year... any ideas how to continue from here? i will have to use a malloc function?

[A good book on C](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/562303/the-definitive-c-book-guide-and-list) would be a worthwhile investment at this point. — Paul R, Oct 14 '13 at 05:55
You don't need pointers at all. The compiler will happily copy structures for you in assignments or as return values. — Some programmer dude, Oct 14 '13 at 05:56
howdo u continue from here? i got myself a c book thought but im still kinda confused — newtocprogramming, Oct 14 '13 at 05:58

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 14 '13 at 07:35

Use strtok and the atoi/strtol family to extract your integer values from the string
Alternatively you can use scanf to do this
Use malloc to allocate a struct of your type and fill the fields with the extracted values
Return the allocated pointer to your struct

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 14 '13 at 07:54

maybe something like this

typedef struct 
{ 
    int day; 
    int month; 
    int year;  
} 
datestructure;

datestructure date_create(const char *datestr)
{
  datestructure ret; // return value
  char* datestrDup = strdup(datestr); // alloc/copy

  ret.day = strtok(datestrDup,"/"); 
  ret.month = strtok(NULL,"/");
  ret.year = strtok(NULL," ");

  free(datestrDup);
  return ret;
}

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Oct 14 '13 at 07:54

Try this, and try to work out what it's doing with your book:

typedef struct _dates
{ 
   int date; 
   int month; 
   int year;
} DateStr;

DateStr * date_create(char *datestr);

int main(int argc, char* argv[])
{
   DateStr *result;
   char inputString[100];
   printf("Enter the date: ");

    if (gets(inputString))
    {
        result = date_create(inputString);

        if (result)
        {
            printf("Parsed date is Date:%d, Month:%d, Year:%d",result->date, result->month, result->year);
        }
    }

    return 0;
} 


DateStr * date_create(char *datestr)
{
    DateStr * date = (DateStr *)malloc(sizeof(DateStr));

    if (date)
    {
        sscanf(datestr, "%d/%d%/%d",&date->date, &date->month, &date->year);
    }

    return date;
}

creating a structure and displaying them

3 Answers3