University of Science, VNU-HCM

Faculty of Information Technology

Introduction to Programming

String in C

Lecturer: Le Ngoc Thanh

Email: lnthanh@fit.hcmus.edu.vn

HCM City 1
Outline

1 Definition

2 Declaration

3 Operations on strings

4 Exercises

2
 Definition
• Concept
– The char type can only contain one character.
To store a string (many characters) we use an
array (one dimension) of characters.
– Character string end with character ‘\0’ (null)
 String length = array size – 1
• Example

char fullname[30];// 29 characters long

char datetime[9]; // 8 characters long

3
 Declaration
• Initialized as regular array
– Specific length
char s[10] = {‘P’, ‘r’, ‘o’, ‘g’, ‘r’, ‘a’, ‘m’, ‘\0’};
char s[10] = “Program”; //Automatically add ‘\0’
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

‘P’ ‘r’ ‘o’ ‘g’ ‘ r’ ‘a’ ‘m’ ‘\0’

– Automatically determine the length

char s[] = {‘P’, ‘r’, ‘o’, ‘g’, ‘r’, ‘a’, ‘m’, ‘\0’};
char s[] = “Program”; //Automatically add ‘\0’
0 1 2 3 4 5 6

‘P’ ‘r’ ‘o’ ‘g’ ‘r ’ ‘a’ ‘m’ ‘\0’

4
 Ouput string
• Use the printf function with the formatter "%s".
char course[50] = “Intro to Programming”;
printf(“%s”, course); // No newline

Intro to Programming

• Use the puts function

char course[50] = “Intro to Programming”;
puts(course); //Automatically newline
 printf(“%s\n”, course);
Intro to Programming
_

5
 Enter string
• Using the scanf function with formatter "%s"
– Accept characters from the keyboard only until they
encounter a space character or a carriage return.
– The received string does not include space characters
and newlines.

char course[50];
printf(“Enter string: ”);
scanf(“%s”, course);
printf(“Input string is: %s”, course);
Enter string: Intro to Programming
Input string is: Intro
_

6
 Enter string
• Use the fgets function or cin.getline (not use gets
function)
– Receive characters from the keyboard until they
encounter a carriage return.
– The string received is what the user entered (except for
a carriage return).

char course[50];
printf(“Enter string: ”);
fgets(course, 50, stdin);//cin.getline(course,50)
printf(“Input string is: %s”, course);
Enter string: Intro to Programming
Input string is: Intro to Programming

7
 Library for manipulating string

• Library <string.h>
– strlen
– strcpy
– strdup
– strlwr/strupr
– strrev
– strcmp/stricmp
– strcat
– strstr

8
Determines the string length

size_t strlen(const char *s)

Determines the string length s.

size_t instead of unsigned (in <stddef.h>)
used to measure unsigned quantities.

String length s (does not include ending

character)

char s[] = “Visual C++ 6.0”;

int len = strlen(s); // => 14

9
Copy the string

char *strcpy(char *dest, const char *src)

Copy string src to string dest, stop when

reach to ‘\0’.
! dest must be large enough to contain src

Pointer dest.

char s[100];
s = “Visual C++ 6.0”; // error
strcpy(s, “Visual C++ 6.0”); // correct

10
Create duplicate string

char *strdup(const char *s)

Create a duplicate of a given string s. The

function will create a memory with strlen (s) + 1
bytes to hold the string s. Manually destroy this
memory when not in use.

Success: return the pointer to the memory

containing the duplicated string.
Fail: return NULL.

char *s;
s = strdup(“Visual C++ 6.0”);

11
Convert string to lower case

char *strlwr(char *s)

Convert the string s to lower case (‘A’ to ‘a’,

‘B’ to ‘b’,…, ‘Z’ to ‘z’)

pointer to s.

char s[] = “Visual C++ 6.0”;

strlwr(s);
puts(s); // visual c++ 6.0

12
Convert string to upper case

char *strupr(char *s)

Convert the string s to lower case (‘a’ to ‘A’,

‘b’ to ‘B’,…, ‘z’ to ‘Z’)

pointer to s.

char s[] = “Visual C++ 6.0”;

strupr(s);
puts(s); // VISUAL C++ 6.0

13
Reverse the string

char *strrev(char *s)

Reverses the order of the characters in the

string s (except the terminating character).

The pointer to the result string.

char s[] = “Visual C++ 6.0”;

strrev(s);
puts(s); // 0.6 ++C lausiV

14
Compare two strings (sensitive)

int strcmp(const char *s1, const char *s2)

Compares the strings s1 and s2 (case

sensitive).

< 0 if s1 < s2
== 0 if s1 == s2
>0 if s1 > s2

char s1[] = “visual C++ 6.0”;

char s2[] = “Visual C++ 6.0”;
int result = strcmp(s1, s2);//=> result > 0

15
Compare two strings (insensitive)

int stricmp(const char *s1, const char *s2)

Compares the strings s1 and s2 (case

insensitive).

< 0 if s1 < s2
== 0 if s1 == s2
>0 if s1 > s2

char s1[] = “visual c++ 6.0”;

char s2[] = “VISUAL C++ 6.0”;
int result = stricmp(s1, s2);// => result = 0

16
Concatenate two strings

char* strcat(char *dest, const char *src)

Concatenate the string src after the string

dest.
!dest must be large enough to contain result

The pointer to the concatenated string.

char s1[100] = “Visual C++”;

char s2[] = “6.0”;
strcat(s1, “ ”); // => “Visual C++ ”
strcat(s1, s2); // => “Visual C++ 6.0”

17
Find the substring in the string

char* strstr(const char *s1, const char *s2)

Find the position of the first occurrence of

s2 in s1

Success: returns the pointer to the first

occurrence of s2 in s1.
Fail: return null.
char s1[] = “Visual C++ 6.0”;
char s2[] = “C++”;
if (strstr(s1, s2) != null)
printf(“Found s2 in s1…”);

18
 Exercises
• Exercise 1: read some other functions
– atoi, atol, atof : convert string to number.
– itoa, ltoa, ultoa: convert numbers to strings.
– strtok
• Exercise 2: Write a function that takes a string
and returns the corresponding string (keeping
the input string unchanged):
– Convert characters to lowercase (like strlwr).
– Convert characters to uppercase (like strupr).
– Change the first characters of each word to an
uppercase letter.
– Remove leading and trailing spaces in string.

19
 Exercises
• Exercise 3: Write a function that receive a string s
and returns the corresponding string after removing
spaces.
• Exercise 4: Write a function that receive a string s
and counts how many words in that string.
• Exercise 5: Write a function that receive a string s
and outputs words on consecutive lines.
• Exercise 6: Write a function to find the word with the
largest length and output it to the screen and its
length respectively.
• Exercise 7: Write a function that extracts the first /
last n characters the given string s.

20
The End