String in C
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String
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Character strings
• String Literals Ordinary letters and escape code characters such as \n
may be written between the quotes.
• In addition to the characters between the quotes, the C translator
adds a null character, \0, to the end of every string literal when it is
compiled into a program.
• Therefore, the literal “cat” actually occupies 4 bytes of memory and
the literal “$” occupies 2.
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Character Arrays
• Make character arrays initialization by means of assigning strings to
the array. As the following:
char c[ ]={“I am happy.”};
char c[ ]=“I am happy.”
• Input and Output of Character strings
• %c : Input / Output one by one. Items of input / output are array elements.
• %s :Input / Output whole string once. Items of input /output are array names.
(when input, there is not symbol “&”.)
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Character Arrays
• After inputting, symbol “\0” is automatically added to the end of a
string; During outputting, the output automatically stop when the
first “\0” is met.
• If several strings are inputted by calling scanf(), blanks are used for
separating strings, as the following:
char str1[5], str2[5], str3[5];
scanf(“%s %s %s”, str1,str2,str3)
the input data on a keyboard is : How are you?
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Character Arrays
• The efficiency of inputting blanks in calling scanf() is separating
strings, therefore, we can not input a whole string to one character
array, as the following:
char str[13]; scanf(“%s”,str);
if input : How are you?
Actually, only input: H o w \0
• In this case, it is better to use string function gets() or make a
character array initialization by means of assigning a string to the
array, than using scanf().
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Compare
two string
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Palindrome
Checking?
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String Library Functions
• strcat(char-array1, char-array2)
String concatenation. Append char-array2 onto the end of char-
array1; return char-array1.
• strcpy(char-array, string)
String copy . Copy a whole string to char-array, including ‘\0’; return
char-array.
• strcmp(string 1,string 2)
String comparison. Compare string1 to string2. Return value is less
than 0 if string1<string2, is equal to 0 if string1== string2, or is
greater than 0 if string1>string2.
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