Encoding, decoding an integer to a char array

Question

Please note that this is not homework and i did search before starting this new thread. I got Store an int in a char array?

I was looking for an answer but didn\'t get a

Answer 1

The use of atoi function is only justified when the string that you are expecting to decode was build by your own code and no further than a couple of lines above. I.e it is only usable in sketch-like code.

Otherwise, especially in your case, when the data arrives from the network, atoi function cannot be meaningfully used to perform decoding, since it provides no usable error handling mechanism and absolutely no protection from overflow (undefined behavior on overflow). The only function that can be meanigfully used for string-to-integer conversion is a function from the strto... group, strtol in your case.