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String functions

Recall that strings in C are just arrays-of-char in which the final character has numerical value 0. The standard library provides a number of useful routines for manipulating strings.


strlen

strlen returns the number of characters in a string, not including the zero-terminator. (Declared in string.h)

  
size_t strlen(const char* s);  /*  size_t is a predefined integer type  */


strcmp

strcmp compares two strings lexicographically. It returns a negative number if the first string is less than the second, zero if the two strings are identical and a positive number if the first string is greater than the second. (Declared in string.h.)

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


strcpy and strncpy

strcpy copies one string into another. The destination string must have enough room for all the characters of the source string, including room for the zero-terminator. The function returns a pointer to the start of the destination string. If available you should use strncpy instead which allows you to specify the amount of space in the destination string. (Declared in string.h.)

  
char *strcpy(char *destination_str, const char *source_str);
 /*  size_t is a predefined integer type  */
char *strncpy(char *destination_str, const char *source_str, size_t size); 


atof, atoi

atof and atoi convert a string to a floating-point number and an integer respectively. (Declared in stdlib.h.)

  
double atof(const char *str);
int atof(const char *str);


next up previous contents index
Next: Reading and Writing: the Up: Some hilights of the Previous: Mathematical functions   Contents   Index
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