Error in using indexOf not finding char in Arduino String - string

Question

I have some code that I have no clue why it isn't working.
The code takes a serial input in the form of "xxx,yyy,zzz", where digits can range from 1 to 3 in each number. Because of an odd quirk in an app, it needs to be read as a char, then converted to a string to be handled. The intention is to split into 3 ints, red green and blue, from "RRR,GGG,BBB".
Now this works fine when I manually define String str (see commented code), but when I go and enter it from the serial console, it doesn't want to work. It seems to be coming from the indexOf(',') part, as while using Serial.print(c1);, I found that when I manually entered a string, it returned an index of the comma, but when I used the serial console, it returned -1 (not found).
And yes, the entered string into the console is in the correct format of "RRR,GGG,BBB", I've confirmed that by printing both phone and str independently.
while (Serial.available() > 0) {
char phone = Serial.read();
String str = String(phone);
//String str = "87,189,183";
int ln = str.length()-1;
int c1 = str.indexOf(','); //first place to cut string
int c2 = str.indexOf(',',c1+1); //second place
red = str.substring(0,c1).toInt();
green = str.substring(c1,c2).toInt();
blue = str.substring(c2,ln).toInt();
Serial.print(red);
Edit: With the Arduino String class, creating a string from a char is returning more than just one character, eleven in fact.

Answer 1

This:
char phone = Serial.read();
String str = String(phone);
will never create a string in str that has more than 1 character, since that's what you say you want.
This is the code for the Arduino's String(char) constructor:
String::String(char c)
{
init();
char buf[2];
buf[0] = c;
buf[1] = 0;
*this = buf;
}
So clearly your code will create a 1-character long string.
Also, beware of using indexes computed on the full string, on substrings later.

Answer 2

I'm try to guess that you are using these serial API http://playground.arduino.cc/Interfacing/CPPWindows.
while (Serial.available() > 0) {
char buf[12];
int len = Serial.ReadData(buf,11);
String str = String(buf);
//String str = "87,189,183";
int ln = str.length()-1;
int c1 = str.indexOf(','); //first place to cut string
int c2 = str.indexOf(',',c1+1); //second place
red = str.substring(0,c1).toInt();
green = str.substring(c1,c2).toInt();
blue = str.substring(c2,ln).toInt();
Serial.print(red);
If you are using other API like http://arduino.cc/en/Serial/Read you should follow these API where Serial is a Stream and read() return just the first available char.

Answer 3

Code was fixed by using a different function.
while (Serial.available() > 0) {
char phone = Serial.read();
str += phone;
//String str = "87,189,183";
int ln = str.length()-1;
int c1 = str.indexOf(','); //first place to cut string
int c2 = str.indexOf(',',c1+1); //second place
red = str.substring(0,c1).toInt();
green = str.substring(c1,c2).toInt();
blue = str.substring(c2,ln).toInt();
Serial.print(red);
I'm not sure why this works, and why before I was getting a string with more than one character. But it works!