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C Programming String

In C programming, strings are arrays of characters that are terminated with a null character ('\0'). Strings can be declared and initialized in several ways, such as character arrays ("abcd") or pointers ("abcd"). To read a string from the user, functions like scanf() and gets() can be used, with scanf() reading a word and gets() reading a full line of input. Various string handling functions defined in the string.h header file make common string operations like finding length or concatenating strings easier.

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78 views

C Programming String

In C programming, strings are arrays of characters that are terminated with a null character ('\0'). Strings can be declared and initialized in several ways, such as character arrays ("abcd") or pointers ("abcd"). To read a string from the user, functions like scanf() and gets() can be used, with scanf() reading a word and gets() reading a full line of input. Various string handling functions defined in the string.h header file make common string operations like finding length or concatenating strings easier.

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C Programming String

In C programming, array of character are called strings. A string is terminated by null character /0 . For
example:
"c string tutorial"

Here, "c string tutorial" is a string. When, compiler encounters strings, it appends null character at the end of
string.

Declaration of strings
Strings are declared in C in similar manner as arrays. Only difference is that, strings are of char type.
char s[5];

Strings can also be declared using pointer.


char *p

Initialization of strings
In C, string can be initialized in different number of ways.
char c[]="abcd";
OR,
char c[5]="abcd";
OR,
char c[]={'a','b','c','d','\0'};
OR;
char c[5]={'a','b','c','d','\0'};

String can also be initialized using pointers


char *c="abcd";
you will more about pointers in next chapter.

Reading Strings from user.


Reading words from user.
char c[20];
scanf("%s",c);

String variable c can only take a word. It is beacause when white space is encountered, the scanf() function
terminates.
Write a C program to illustrate how to read string from terminal.
#include <stdio.h>
int main(){
char name[20];
printf("Enter name: ");
scanf("%s",name);
printf("Your name is %s.",name);
return 0;
}

Output
Enter name: Dennis Ritchie
Your name is Dennis.

Here, program will ignore Ritchie because, scanf() function takes only string before the white space.

Reading a line of text


C program to read line of text manually.
#include <stdio.h>
int main(){
char name[30],ch;
int i=0;
printf("Enter name: ");
while(ch!='\n') // terminates if user hit enter
{
ch=getchar();
name[i]=ch;
i++;
}
name[i]='\0';
// inserting null character at end
printf("Name: %s",name);
return 0;
}

This process to take string is tedious. There are predefined functions gets() and puts in C language to read
and display string respectively.
int main(){
char name[30];
printf("Enter name: ");
gets(name);
//Function to read string from user.
printf("Name: ");
puts(name); //Function to display string.
return 0;
}

Both, the above program has same output below:

Output
Enter name: Tom Hanks
Name: Tom Hanks

String handling functions


You can perform different type of string operations manually like: finding length of string,
concatenating(joining) two strings etc. But, for programmers ease, many library function are defined under
header file <string.h> to handle these commonly used talk in C programming. You will learn more about
string hadling function in next chapter.

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