Parsing buffer data in C++

class ReturnMessage{
    char *message; 
    public:
    char *getMessage(unsigned char *buffer,int count){
         message = new char[count];
         for(int i = 1; i < count-2; i++){
            message[i-1] = buffer[i];
         }
         message[count-2] = '\0';
         return message;
    }
};
class ParserToMessage{
static int BufferSize = 1024;
unsigned char buffer[BufferSize];
unsigned int counter;
public:
  static char *parse_buffer()
  {
     ReturnMessage rm;
     unsigned char buffByte;
     buffByte = blueToothGetByte(); //fictional getchar() kind of function for bluetooth
     if(buffByte == 0x43){
        buffer[counter++] = buffByte;
        //continue until you find 0x0D
        while((buffByte = blueToothGetByte()) != 0x0D){
            buffer[counter++] = buffByte;
        }
     }
     return rm.getMessage(buffer,counter);
   }
};

Can you have the parser as a method of a 'ProtocolUnit' class? The method could take a buffer pointer/length as a parameter and return an int that indicates how many bytes it consumed from the buffer before it correctly assembled a complete protocol unit, or -1 if it needs more bytes from the next buffer.

Once you have a complete ProtocolUnit, you can do what you wish with it, (eg. queue it off to some processing thread), and create a new one for the remaining bytes/next buffer.

The question "how should I parse this" depends largely on how you want to parse the data. Two things are missing from your question:

1. Exactly how do you receive the data? You mention Bluetooth but what is the programming medium? Are you reading from a socket? Do you have some other kind of API? Do you receive it byte at a time or in blocks?
2. What are the rules for dealing with the data you are receiving? Most data is delimited in some way or of fixed field length. In your case, you mention that it can be of any length but unless you explain how you want to parse it, I can't help.

One suggestion I would make is to change the type of your buffer to use std::vector :

std::vector<unsigned char> buffer(normalSize)

You should choose normalSize to be something around the most frequently observed size of your incoming message. A vector will grow as you push items onto it so, unlike the array you created, you won't need to worry about buffer overrun if you get a large message. However, if you do go above normalSize under the covers the vector will reallocate enough memory to cope with your extended requirements. This can be expensive so you don't want to do it too often.

You use a vector in pretty much the same way as your array. One key difference is that you can simply push elements onto the end of the vector, rather than having to keep a running pointer. SO imagine you received a single int at a time from the Bluetooth source, your code might look something like this:

// Clear out the previous contents of the buffer.
buffer.clear();

int elem(0);
// Find the start of your message. Throw away elements
// that we don't need.
while ( 0x43 != ( elem = getNextBluetoothInt() ) );

// Push elements of the message into the buffer until
// we hit the end.
while ( 0x0D != elem )
{
    buffer.push_back( elem );
}
buffer.push_back( elem ); // Remember to add on the last one.

The key benefit is that array will automatically resize the vector without you having to do it no matter whether the amount of characters pushed on is 10 or 10,000.