Strings
Is string a data type in C?
- No
- We have char, int, float and other data types but not 'string' data type in C
- String is a supported data type in C but it is a very useful concept used to model real world entities like name, city etc.
- We express strings using an array of characters terminated by a null character ('\0')
- Null character tells us that the string is terminated or ended
- To store a string the length of character should be the length of string + 1 to store the null character ("harryare" length should be 9)
What are strings
- String: array of characters terminated by NULL character
- Strings in c is created by creating an array of characters
- We need an extra character ('\0' or null character) to tell the compiler that the string ends here.
Creating string
- We can create a character array in the following ways:
- char name[] = "harry"; //the compiler automatically puts null character
- char name[]= {'h','a','r','r','y','\0'}; //we have to manually put null character here
Taking string input from the user
char str[52];
gets(str); //There is a function in stdio.h library called 'gets' which help us to take input from user.
printf("%s", str); //Either we can use printf or the code below to print the string
// notice above we are not using '&' as the name of the string possesses the base address of the string i.e. the address of the first element of the string.
puts(str); //aliter
#include <stdio.h>
void printStr(char str[])
{
int i = 0;
while (str[i] != '\0')
{
printf("%c", str[i]);
i++;
}
printf("\n%s\n", str); // to print whole string we use %s format specifier
}
int main()
{
// char str[] = {'h','a','r','r','y'}; //although the program doesn't show any error but this is not valid
char str[] = {'h', 'a', 'r', 'r', 'y', '\0'}; // this is valid
printStr(str);
// taking input form user
char str2[20]; // gives error when we don't specify the length
gets(str2);
// printing using puts
puts(str2);
return 0;
}