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Strings and Null-Terminated Character Sequences

This document discusses strings and null-terminated character sequences (NTCS) in C and C++. It notes that NTCS using character arrays are commonly used to represent strings in C, while C++ introduces a string class. However, NTCS remain important as string literals produce NTCS. The document provides an example showing NTCS and strings can be used interchangeably with input/output streams. It highlights that arrays have a fixed size while strings are dynamic. Finally, it notes NTCS can be converted to strings and vice versa using functions like c_str().

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85 views2 pages

Strings and Null-Terminated Character Sequences

This document discusses strings and null-terminated character sequences (NTCS) in C and C++. It notes that NTCS using character arrays are commonly used to represent strings in C, while C++ introduces a string class. However, NTCS remain important as string literals produce NTCS. The document provides an example showing NTCS and strings can be used interchangeably with input/output streams. It highlights that arrays have a fixed size while strings are dynamic. Finally, it notes NTCS can be converted to strings and vice versa using functions like c_str().

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icul1
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Strings and null-terminated character sequences

Plain arrays with null-terminated sequences of characters are the typical types used in the C
language to represent strings (that is why they are also known as C-strings). In C++, even though
the standard library defines a specific type for strings (class string), still, plain arrays with null-
terminated sequences of characters (C-strings) are a natural way of representing strings in the
language; in fact, string literals still always produce null-terminated character sequences, and
not string objects.

In the standard library, both representations for strings (C-strings and library strings) coexist, and
most functions requiring strings are overloaded to support both.

For example, cin and cout support null-terminated sequences directly, allowing them to be
directly extracted fromcin or inserted into cout, just like strings. For example:
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// strings and NTCS:
#include <iostream>
#include <string>
using namespace std;

int main ()
{
char question1[] = "What is your name? ";
string question2 = "Where do you live? ";
char answer1 [80];
string answer2;
cout << question1;
cin >> answer1;
cout << question2;
cin >> answer2;
cout << "Hello, " << answer1;
cout << " from " << answer2 << "!\n";
return 0;
}
What is your name? Homer
Where do you live? Greece
Hello, Homer from Greece!


In this example, both arrays of characters using null-terminated sequences and strings are used.
They are quite interchangeable in their use together with cin and cout, but there is a notable
difference in their declarations: arrays have a fixed size that needs to be specified either implicit
or explicitly when declared; question1 has a size of exactly 20 characters (including the
terminating null-characters) and answer1 has a size of 80 characters; while strings are simply
strings, no size is specified. This is due to the fact that strings have a dynamic size determined
during runtime, while the size of arrays is determined on compilation, before the program runs.

In any case, null-terminated character sequences and arrays are easily transformed from one
another:

Null-terminated character sequences can be transformed into strings implicitly, and strings can
be transformed into null-terminated character sequences by using either of string's member
functions c_str or data:
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char myntcs[] = "some text";
string mystring = myntcs; // convert c-string to string
cout << mystring; // printed as a library string
cout << mystring.c_str(); // printed as a c-string


(note: both c_str and data members of string are equivalent)

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