Strings in C

A String in C programming is a sequence of characters

terminated with a null character ‘\0’. The C String is stored as
an array of characters. The difference between a character
array and a C string is that the string in C is terminated with a
unique character ‘\0’.

C String Declaration Syntax

Declaring a string in C is as simple as declaring a one-

dimensional array. Below is the basic syntax for declaring a
string.

char string_name[size];

In the above syntax string_name is any name given to the

string variable and size is used to define the length of the
string, i.e the number of characters strings will store.

There is an extra terminating character which is the Null

character (‘\0’) used to indicate the termination of a string
that differs strings from normal character arrays.

C String Initialization

A string in C can be initialized in different ways. We will

explain this with the help of an example. Below are the
examples to declare a string with the name str and initialize it
with “GeeksforGeeks”.
We can initialize a C string in 4 different ways which are as
follows:

1. Assigning a String Literal without Size

String literals can be assigned without size. Here, the name of

the string str acts as a pointer because it is an array.

char str[] = "GeeksforGeeks";

2. Assigning a String Literal with a Predefined Size

String literals can be assigned with a predefined size. But we

should always account for one extra space which will be
assigned to the null character. If we want to store a string of
size n then we should always declare a string with a size
equal to or greater than n+1.

char str[50] = "GeeksforGeeks";

3. Assigning Character by Character with Size

We can also assign a string character by character. But we

should remember to set the end character as ‘\0’ which is a
null character.

char str[14] = { 'G','e','e','k','s','f','o','r','G','e','e','k','s','\0'};

4. Assigning Character by Character without Size

We can assign character by character without size with the

NULL character at the end. The size of the string is
determined by the compiler automatically.

char str[] = { 'G','e','e','k','s','f','o','r','G','e','e','k','s','\0'};

Note: When a Sequence of characters enclosed in the double
quotation marks is encountered by the compiler, a null
character ‘\0’ is appended at the end of the string by default.

Let us now look at a sample program to get a clear

understanding of declaring, and initializing a string in C, and
also how to print a string with its size.

C String Example

// C program to illustrate strings

#include <stdio.h>

#include <string.h>

int main()

// declare and initialize string

char str[] = "Geeks";

// print string

printf("%s\n", str);
 int length = 0;

length = strlen(str);

// displaying the length of string

printf("Length of string str is %d", length);

return 0;

Output

Geeks

Length of string str is 5

We can see in the above program that strings can be printed

using normal printf statements just like we print any other
variable. Unlike arrays, we do not need to print a string,
character by character.

Note: The C language does not provide an inbuilt data type

for strings but it has an access specifier “%s” which can be
used to print and read strings directly.

Read a String Input From the User

The following example demonstrates how to take string input

using scanf() function in C
C

// C program to read string from user

#include<stdio.h>

int main()

// declaring string

char str[50];

// reading string

scanf("%s",str);

// print string

printf("%s",str);

return 0;

Input

GeeksforGeeks
Output

GeeksforGeeks

You can see in the above program that the string can also be
read using a single scanf statement. Also, you might be
thinking that why we have not used the ‘&’ sign with the
string name ‘str’ in scanf statement! To understand this you
will have to recall your knowledge of scanf.
We know that the ‘&’ sign is used to provide the address of
the variable to the scanf() function to store the value read in
memory. As str[] is a character array so using str without
braces ‘[‘ and ‘]’ will give the base address of this string.
That’s why we have not used ‘&’ in this case as we are
already providing the base address of the string to scanf.

Now consider one more example,

// C Program to take input string which is separated by

// whitespaces

#include <stdio.h>

// driver code

int main()

char str[20];
 // taking input string

scanf("%s", str);

// printing the read string

printf("%s", str);

return 0;

Input

Geeks for Geeks

Output

Geeks

Here, the string is read only till the whitespace is

encountered.

Note: After declaration, if we want to assign some other text

to the string, we have to assign it one by one or use the built-
in strcpy() function because the direct assignment of the
string literal to character array is only possible in declaration.

How to Read a String Separated by Whitespaces in C?

We can use multiple methods to read a string separated by

spaces in C. The two of the common ones are:
 1. We can use the fgets() function to read a line of
string and gets() to read characters from the
standard input (stdin) and store them as a C string
until a newline character or the End-of-file (EOF) is
reached.

2. We can also scanset characters inside the scanf()

function

1. Example of String Input using gets()

// C program to illustrate

// fgets()

#include <stdio.h>

#define MAX 50

int main()

char str[MAX];

// MAX Size if 50 defined

fgets(str, MAX, stdin);

printf("String is: \n");

 // Displaying Strings using Puts

puts(str);

return 0;

Input

GeeksforGeeks

Output

String is:
GeeksforGeeks

2. Example of String Input using scanset

// C Program to take string separated by whitespace using

// scanset characters

#include <stdio.h>

// driver code

int main()

{
 char str[20];

// using scanset in scanf

scanf("%[^\n]s", str);

// printing read string

printf("%s", str);

return 0;

Input

Geeks for Geeks

Output

Geeks for Geeks

C String Length

The length of the string is the number of characters present

in the string except for the NULL character. We can easily
find the length of the string using the loop to count the
characters from the start till the NULL character is found.

Passing Strings to Function

As strings are character arrays, we can pass strings to
functions in the same way we pass an array to a function.
Below is a sample program to do this:

// C program to illustrate how to

// pass string to functions

#include <stdio.h>

void printStr(char str[]) { printf("String is : %s", str); }

int main()

// declare and initialize string

char str[] = "GeeksforGeeks";

// print string by passing string

// to a different function

printStr(str);

return 0;

}
Output:

String is : GeeksforGeeks

Note: We can’t read a string value with spaces, we can use

either gets() or fgets() in the C programming language.

Strings and Pointers in C

In Arrays, the variable name points to the address of the first

element.

Below is the memory representation of the string str =

“Geeks”.

Similar to arrays, In C, we can create a character pointer to a

string that points to the starting address of the string which is
the first character of the string. The string can be accessed
with the help of pointers as shown in the below example.

// C program to print string using Pointers

#include <stdio.h>

int main()

char str[20] = "GeeksforGeeks";

 // Pointer variable which stores

// the starting address of

// the character array str

char* ptr = str;

// While loop will run till

// the character value is not

// equal to null character

while (*ptr != '\0') {

printf("%c", *ptr);

// moving pointer to the next character.

ptr++;

return 0;

Output
GeeksforGeeks

Standard C Library – String.h Functions

The C language comes bundled with <string.h> which

contains some useful string-handling functions. Some of
them are as follows:

Function Name Description

strlen(string_name) Returns the length of string name.

Copies the contents of string s2 to

strcpy(s1, s2)
string s1.

Compares the first string with the

strcmp(str1, str2) second string. If strings are the
same it returns 0.

Concat s1 string with s2 string and

strcat(s1, s2) the result is stored in the first
string.

strlwr() Converts string to lowercase.

Function Name Description

strupr() Converts string to uppercase.

Find the first occurrence of s2 in

strstr(s1, s2)
s1.

strlen() function in c

The strlen() function in C calculates the length of a given

string. The strlen() function is defined in string.h header file.
It doesn’t count the null character ‘\0’.

Syntax of C strlen()

The syntax of strlen() function in C is as follows:

size_t strlen(const char* str);

Parameters

The strlen() function only takes a single parameter.

 str: It represents the string variable whose length we

have to find.

Return Value
  This function returns the integral length of the string
passed.

C strlen() Function

Example of C strlen()

The below programs illustrate the strlen() function in C:

 C

// c program to demonstrate

// example of strlen() function.

#include <stdio.h>

#include <string.h>
 int main()

// defining string

char str[] = "GeeksforGeeks";

// getting length of str using strlen()

int length = strlen(str);

printf("Length of string is : %d", length);

return 0;

Output

Length of string is : 13

Important Points about strlen()

The following points should be kept in mind while using

strlen():

 strlen() does not count the NULL character ‘\0’.

 The time complexity of strlen() is O(n), where n is the

number of characters in the string.
 Its return type is size_t ( which is generally unsigned
int ).