As the title says, my class is returning garbage strings and I can’t figure out where the problem is. Note that this code is C with Classes, so the code has some C++ features, but specifically no namespaces (i.e. no std::string).

I did search the Q&A before posting, but most of the other Qs are assuming a more modern implementation of the language.

class definition file:

#ifndef SOFTWARE_HPP
#define SOFTWARE_HPP 1

#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>

class Software
{
    char* name;

    public:
    Software( void );
    Software( const char* Name );
    ~Software( void );

    void Name( const char* Name );
    char* Name( void ) const;
};

void GetSoftware( Software* (&software)[], const unsigned short ArraySize );

#endif

Class implementation file:

#include "software.hpp"

const unsigned short _MAX_SOFTWARE_NAME = 21;

Software::Software( void )
{
    name = new char[_MAX_SOFTWARE_NAME + 1];

    name[0] = NULL;
}

Software::Software( const char* Name )
{
    name = new char[_MAX_SOFTWARE_NAME + 1];

    strncpy( name, Name, _MAX_SOFTWARE_NAME );
}

Software::~Software( void )
{
    delete[] name;
}

void Software::Name( const char* Name )
{
    if ( strlen( Name ) < _MAX_SOFTWARE_NAME ) {
        strncpy( name, Name, _MAX_SOFTWARE_NAME );
    }
}

char* Software::Name( void ) const
{
    return name;
}

void GetSoftware( Software* (&software)[], const unsigned short ArraySize )
{
    for ( short i = 0; i < ArraySize; ++i ) {
        software[i] = new Software( "SoftwareName" );
    }
}

Then in my main program:

#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
#include "software.hpp"

int main( int argc, char* argv[] )
{
    Software* software[16] = { NULL };
    GetSoftware( software, 16 );

    for ( int i = 0; i < sizeof( software ) / sizeof( software[0] ); ++i ) {
        printf( "Software %s", software[i]->Name() );
    }
}

So if I’m doing this right, I’m passing in my array of objects by reference. If I printf the Software::Name from the implementation file, the characters are fine. But when I try to output the string from the main() function, I get a bunch of garbage characters.

One interesting note is that if I run my application from my Windows NT development machine, the characters print out fine, but when run under true DOS is when I get the garbles.

This is a medium memory model project, btw. Any ideas what I’m doing wrong?