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In C, strings are one special kind of array: a string is an array of char
values:
char name[7];
I introduced the char
type when I introduced types, but in short it is commonly used to store letters of the ASCII chart.
A string can be initialized like you initialize a normal array:
char name[7] = { 'F', 'l', 'a', 'v', 'i', 'o' };
Or more conveniently with a string literal (also called string constant), a sequence of characters enclosed in double quotes:
char name[7] = "Flavio";
You can print a string via printf()
using %s
:
printf("%s", name);
Do you notice how “Flavio” is 6 chars long, but I defined an array of length 7? Why? This is because the last character in a string must be a 0
value, the string terminator, and we must make space for it.
This is important to keep in mind especially when manipulating strings.
Speaking of manipulating strings, there’s one important standard library that is provided by C: string.h
.
This library is essential because it abstracts many of the low level details of working with strings, and provides us a set of useful functions.
You can load the library in your program by adding on top:
#include <string.h>
And once you do that, you have access to:
strcpy()
to copy a string over another stringstrcat()
to append a string to another stringstrcmp()
to compare two strings for equalitystrncmp()
to compare the firstn
characters of two stringsstrlen()
to calculate the length of a string
and many, many more.
I will introduce all those string functions in separate blog posts, but just know that they exist.
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More clang tutorials:
- Introduction to the C Programming Language
- C Variables and types
- C Constants
- C Operators
- C Conditionals
- How to work with loops in C
- Introduction to C Arrays
- How to determine the length of an array in C
- Introduction to C Strings
- How to find the length of a string in C
- Introduction to C Pointers
- Looping through an array with C
- Booleans in C
- Introduction to C Functions
- How to use NULL in C
- Basic I/O concepts in C
- Double quotes vs single quotes in C
- How to return a string from a C function
- How to solve the implicitly declaring library function warning in C
- How to check a character value in C
- How to print the percentage character using `printf()` in C
- C conversion specifiers and modifiers
- How to access the command line parameters in C
- Scope of variables in C
- Can you nest functions in C?
- Static variables in C
- C Global Variables
- The typedef keyword in C
- C Enumerated Types
- C Structures
- C Header Files
- The C Preprocessor