String in C Programming Language

String in C Programming Language

In this post, We will learn about string in C programming language.

Introduction

A string in C is merely an array of characters. The length of a string is determined by a terminating null character: '\0'. So, a string with the contents, say, "abc" has four characters: 'a', 'b', 'c', and the terminating null character.

Initialize String in C

Suppose you want to store Rozgardesh in String str you can do using one of below way

 1. char str[] = "RozgarDesh";  
 2. char str[50] = "RozgarDesh";  
 3. char str[] = {'R','o','z','g','a','r','d','e','s','h','\0'};  
 4. char str[11] = {'R','o','z','g','a','r','d','e','s','h','\0'};  

Display String

Here is an example to display the value of a string variable on the terminal.

 #include<stdio.h>  
 int main()  
 {    
   // declare and initialize string  
   char str[] = "Rozgardesh";  
   // print string  
   printf("%s",str);  
   return 0;  
 }  

String as User Input

Here is an example to take a string input from the user

  // C program to read strings   
  #include<stdio.h>   
  int main()   
  {    
   // declaring string   
   char str[50];   
   // reading string   
   scanf("%s",str);   
   // print string   
   printf("%s",str);   
   return 0;   
  }   

The more commonly-used string functions

The nine most commonly used functions in the string library are:

• strcat - concatenate two strings
• strchr - string scanning operation
• strcmp - compare two strings
• strcpy - copy a string
• strlen - get string length
• strncat - concatenate one string with part of another
• strncmp - compare parts of two strings
• strncpy - copy part of a string
• strrchr - string scanning operation

All these functions come under <string.h> library. So in order to use these function, you have to include <string.h> header file in your source code. We will discuss examples of these function in another post.

Please write comments if you find anything incorrect, or you want to share more information about the topic discussed above.