Scribd
Upload
26 views

CSCI-1190: Beginning C Programming For Engineers: Lecture 5: Characters and Strings Gang Chen

This document summarizes a lecture on characters and strings in the C programming language. 1) Characters are small integers from 0-255 that represent ASCII codes. Character constants denote corresponding characters like '0' and '\n'. 2) Strings have two interpretations - arrays of characters or pointers pointing to characters. Strings are null-terminated with '\0'. 3) Common string functions include strlen(), strcmp(), and strcpy(). Input/output of strings uses scanf() and printf().

Uploaded by

Abdul Wahab
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
Available Formats
Download as PPT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
26 views

CSCI-1190: Beginning C Programming For Engineers: Lecture 5: Characters and Strings Gang Chen

This document summarizes a lecture on characters and strings in the C programming language. 1) Characters are small integers from 0-255 that represent ASCII codes. Character constants denote corresponding characters like '0' and '\n'. 2) Strings have two interpretations - arrays of characters or pointers pointing to characters. Strings are null-terminated with '\0'. 3) Common string functions include strlen(), strcmp(), and strcpy(). Input/output of strings uses scanf() and printf().

Uploaded by

Abdul Wahab
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
Available Formats
Download as PPT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 9

CSCI-1190: Beginning C

Programming for Engineers


Lecture 5: Characters and Strings
Gang Chen
Characters
• Type char
• Characters are small integers (0-255)
• Character constants are integers that denote
corresponding characters
– '0','1','A','B','a','b','\n'
• ASCII code maps characters to integers
ASCII Code
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57
A B C D E F G H I J
65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74
a b c d e f g h i j
97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106
NULL BEL TAB NEWLINE SPACE
(\0) (\g) (\t) (\n)
0 7 9 10 32
Strings
• Two interpretations
– Arrays whose elements are characters
– Pointers pointing to characters
• Strings are always terminated with a NULL character ('\0'
or 0)
char a[]="hello\n"; /* size? */
char* b=“hello\n”;

a[0] a[1] a[2] a[3] a[4] a[5] a[6]


*b *(b+1) *(b+2) *(b+3) *(b+4) *(b+5) *(b+6)
h e l l o \n null
104 101 108 108 111 10 0
Input/Output with Strings
1. #include <stdio.h>
2. int main()
3. {
4. char s[10];
5. scanf("%s",s); /* bad */
6. scanf("%9s",s); /* good */
7. printf("%s",s);
8. return 0;
9. }
String Operations
• The header file string.h contains functions
that work with strings
– strlen(a): number of characters in a
– strcmp(a,b): compares a and b, returning 0 if
they are equal
• NOT a==b;
– strcpy(a,b): copies contents of b into a
• NOT a=b;
In-Class Exercise 5-1
• Write a program that reads a line of text from the
keyboard using the gets() funtion, then prints it out
backwards. For instance, if you type in the line:
Test data
The result should be:
atad tseT
The syntax for the gets() function:
char s[100];
gets(s);
Make use of the strlen() function
Converting Numeric Strings to
Numbers
• From characters to digits
/* a is a character */
n=a-'0'; /* n is now a digit */
• From digits to numbers
3492 = 2+9*10+4*100+3*1000
= 2+10*(9+10*(4+10*3))
In-Class Exercise 5-2
• Write a program that reads an integer
represented as a string from the keyboard,
then coverts the string to the integer and
prints it out.
• Notes:
– You must use scanf("%s",s) to read a string
– Do NOT use atoi() or any other similar
functions

You might also like