Yes, you are right. The description and the solution covers only the years and centuries AD.

The century 1 contains the years 1, 2, ... 100 AD. The description does not specify the format of years BCE or centuries BCE. Some notations are "-1", "1 B.C.", "1 BC" or "1 BCE". A correct solution without a description of the year/century format is not possible.

That's all very neat, but doesn't work for ages BCE.

It's actually already a pointer, and *text dereferences it, same as text[0], but with the benefit of allowing the post-increment operator. (Hmm, will text++[0] work? I forget.)