C Strings

C Strings

Strings

Strings are actually one-dimensional array, used for storing text/characters of characters terminated by a null character '\0'. Thus a null-terminated string contains the characters that comprise the string followed by a null.

Declaration of Strings in C

String declaration is as simple as the declaration of a one-dimensional array. There are two ways to declare a string in C:-

Initialization of a string in C

Strings can be initialized in different ways. Below are some examples of string initialization.

Example - string initialization

//intialization of string by char array int main(){ char ch[10]={'C', 'O', 'D', 'E', 'P', 'L', 'A', 'Y', '\0'}; printf("Char Array Value is: %s", ch); return 0; }

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Example

int main(){ //intialization of string literal char ch[]={"CODEPLAY"}; printf("String Literal Value is: %s", ch); }

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Access Strings

Since strings are actually arrays in C, you can access a string by referring to its index number inside square brackets [].

Example - string access

//prints the first character (0) in array char ch[]={"Tutorial Codeplay"}; //%c format specifier to print a single character printf("%c", ch[0]); return 0;

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Modify Strings

To change the value of a specific character in a string, refer to the index number, and use single quotes:

Example - modify string

int main() { char ch[]={"Cutorial Codeplay"}; ch[0] = 'T'; printf("%s", ch); return 0; }

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Read a string in C:

Use functions like scanf(), fgets(), gets() to read a string from the user.

Example

int main() { char name[100]; printf("Name:"); //get string input scanf("%s",name); //print the name printf("Tutorial %s",name); return 0; }

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Another Way Of Creating Strings

In the examples above, we used a "string literal" to create a string variable. This is the easiest way to create a string in C.

Example - string creation

//intialization of string literal char ch1[]={"Welcome To Tutorial CODEPLAY"}; printf("String Literal Value is: %s\n", ch1); //intialization of string by char array char ch2[100]={'W','e','l','c','o','m','e', ' ', 'T','o',' ', 'T','u','t','o','r','i','a','l',' ', 'C','O','D','E','P','L','A','Y','\0'}; printf("Char Array Value is: %s\n", ch2);

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