Strings

Strings are Character Arrays

 Strings in C are simply arrays of characters.
– Example: char s [10];
 This is a ten (10) element array that can hold a
character string consisting of  9 characters.
 This is because C does not know where the end
of an array is at run time.
– By convention, C uses a NULL character '\0' to
terminate all strings in its library functions
 For example:
char str [10] = {'u', 'n', 'I', 'x', '\0'};
 It’s the string terminator (not the size of the
array) that determines the length of the string.
 Accessing Individual Characters
 The first element of any array in C is at index 0. The
second is at index 1, and so on ...
char s[10];
s[0] = 'h';
s[1] = 'i’; h i ! \0 ? ? ? ? ? ?
s[2] = '!'; s [0] [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9]
s[3] = '\0';
 This notation can be used in all kinds of statements
and expressions in C:
 For example:
c = s[1];
if (s[0] == '-') …
switch (s[1]) ...
 String Literals
 String literals are given as a string quoted
by double quotes.
– printf("Long long ago.");
 Initializing char array ...
– char s[10]="unix"; /* s[4] is '\0'; */
– char s[ ]="unix"; /* s has five elements */
 Printing with printf ( )
 Example:
char str[ ] = "A message to display";
printf ("%s\n", str);

 printf expects to receive a string as an additional

parameter when it sees %s in the format string
– Can be from a character array.
– Can be another literal string.
– Can be from a character pointer (more on this later).

 printf knows how much to print out because of

the NULL character at the end of all strings.
– When it finds a \0, it knows to stop.
 Example
char str[10]="unix and c";

printf("%s", str);
printf("\n");
str[6]='\0';
printf("%s", str);
printf("\n");

printf("\n");
printf(str);
printf("\n");
str[2]=‘&';
printf(str);
printf("\n");
 Printing with puts( )
 The puts function is a much simpler output
function than printf for string printing.
 Prototype of puts is defined in stdio.h
int puts(const char * str)
– This is more efficient than printf
 Because your program doesn't need to analyze
the format string at run-time.
 For example:
char sentence[] = "The quick brown fox\n";
puts(sentence);
 Prints out:
The quick brown fox
 Inputting Strings with gets( )
 gets( ) gets a line from the standard input.
 The prototype is defined in stdio.h
char *gets(char *str)
– str is a pointer to the space where gets will store the
line to, or a character array.
– Returns NULL upon failure. Otherwise, it returns str.
char your_line[100];
printf("Enter a line:\n");
gets(your_line);
puts("Your input follows:\n");
puts(your_line);
– You can overflow your string buffer, so be careful!
 Inputting Strings with scanf ( )
 To read a string include:
– %s scans up to but not including the “next” white
space character
– %ns scans the next n characters or up to the next
white space character, whichever comes first
 Example:
scanf ("%s%s%s", s1, s2, s3);
scanf ("%2s%2s%2s", s1, s2, s3);
– Note: No ampersand(&) when inputting strings into
character arrays! (We’ll explain why later …)
 Difference between gets
– gets( ) read a line
– scanf("%s",…) read up to the next space
 An Example
#include <stdio.h>
int main () {
char lname[81], fname[81];
int count, id_num;
puts ("Enter the last name, firstname, ID number
separated");
puts ("by spaces, then press Enter \n");
count = scanf ("%s%s%d", lname, fname,&id_num);
printf ("%d items entered: %s %s %d\n",
count,fname,lname,id_num);
return 0;
}
 The C String Library
 String functions are provided in an ANSI
standard string library.
– Access this through the include file:
#include <string.h>
– Includes functions such as:
 Computing length of string
 Copying strings
 Concatenating strings

– This library is guaranteed to be there in any

ANSI standard implementation of C.
 strlen
 strlen returns the length of a NULL terminated
character string:
size_t strlen (char * str) ;
 Defined in string.h
 size_t
– A type defined in string.h that is equivalent to an
unsigned int
 char *str
– Points to a series of characters or is a character array
ending with '\0'
– The following code has a problem!
char a[5]={‘a’, ’b’, ’c’, ’d’, ’e’};
strlen(a);
 strcpy
 Copying a string comes in the form:
char *strcpy (char * destination, char * source);
 A copy of source is made at destination
– source should be NULL terminated
– destination should have enough room
(its length should be at least the size of
source)
 The return value also points at the
destination.
 strcat
 Included in string.h and comes in the form:
char * strcat (char * str1, char * str2);
 Appends a copy of str2 to the end of str1
 A pointer equal to str1 is returned

 Ensure that str1 has sufficient space for

the concatenated string!
– Array index out of range will be the most
popular bug in your C programming career.
 Example
#include <string.h>
#include <stdio.h>
int main() {
char str1[27] = "abc";
char str2[100];
printf("%d\n",strlen(str1));
strcpy(str2,str1);
puts(str2);
puts("\n");
strcat(str2,str1);
puts(str2);
}
 Comparing Strings
 C strings can be compared for equality or
inequality
 If they are equal - they are ASCII identical
 If they are unequal the comparison
function will return an int that is interpreted
as:
< 0 : str1 is less than str2
0 : str1 is equal to str2
> 0 : str1 is greater than str2
 strcmp
 Four basic comparison functions:
int strcmp (char *str1, char *str2) ;
 Does an ASCII comparison one char at a time
until a difference is found between two chars
– Return value is as stated before
 If both strings reach a '\0' at the same time, they
are considered equal.
int strncmp (char *str1, char * str2, size_t n);
 Compares n chars of str1 and str2

– Continues until n chars are compared or

– The end of str1or str2 is encountered
– Also have strcasecmp() and strncasecmp() which do
the same as above, but ignore case in letters.
 Example
 An Example - strncmp

int main() {
char str1[] = "The first string.";
char str2[] = "The second string.";
size_t n, x;
printf("%d\n", strncmp(str1,str2,4) );
printf("%d\n", strncmp(str1,str2,5) );
}
 Searching Strings (1)
 There are a number of searching functions:
– char * strchr (char * str, int ch) ;
 strchr search str until ch is found or NULL
character is found instead.
 If found, a (non-NULL) pointer to ch is returned.

– Otherwise, NULL is returned instead.

– You can determine its location (index) in the string
by:
 Subtracting the value returned from the
address of the start of the string
– More pointer arithmetic … more on this later!
 Example
Example use of strchr:
#include<stdio.h>
#include<string.h>
int main() {
char ch='b', buf[80];
strcpy(buf, "The quick brown fox");
if (strchr(buf,ch) == NULL)
printf ("The character %c was not found.\n",ch);
else
printf ("The character %c was found at position
%d\n", ch, strchr(buf,ch)-buf+1);
}
 Searching Strings (2)
 Another string searching function:
char * strstr (char * str, char * query) ;
 strstr searches str until query is found or a
NULL character is found instead.
 If found, a (non-NULL) pointer to str is
returned.
– Otherwise, NULL is returned instead.
 sprintf
#include <stdio.h>
int sprintf( char *s, const char *format, …);
 Instead of printing to the stdin with
printf(…), sprintf prints to a string.
 Very useful for formatting a string, or when
one needs to convert integers or floating
point numbers to strings.
 There is also a sscanf for formatted input
from a string in the same way scanf works.
 Example:
#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
int main()
{
char result[100];
sprintf(result, "%f", (float)17/37 );
if (strstr(result, "45") != NULL)
printf("The digit sequence 45 is in 17

divided by 37. \n");

return 0;
}
 Converting Strings to Numbers (1)
 Contained in <stdlib.h> and are often used
int atoi (char *ptr);
– Takes a character string and converts it to an integer.
– White space and + or - are OK.
– Starts at beginning and continues until something
non-convertible is encountered.
 Some examples:
String Value returned
"157" 157
"-1.6" -1
"+50x" 50
"twelve" 0
"x506" 0
 Converting Strings to Numbers (2)
long atol (char *ptr) ;
– Same as atoi except it returns a long.
double atof (char * str);
– Handles digits 0-9.
– A decimal point.
– An exponent indicator (e or E).
– If no characters are convertible a 0 is returned.
 Examples:
– String Value returned
"12" 12.000000
"-0.123" -0.123000
"123E+3" 123000.000000
"123.1e-5" 0.001231