ICS3U Lesson 6 Using Strings In C Page 1 of 3

Strings in 'C'
There is no String type in 'C' so you can't declare it like an integer.

String myString; //is invalid.

Instead strings are stored as an array of characters terminated by a "null zero". We will
learn more about arrays later in the course.

An array is just the individual characters in the string being stored together in memory. A
character array is nothing more than a list of characters.

A 'null zero' lets the computer know when you have finished your string. We use '\0' to
denote a null zero. It is called a "string terminator".

Note that it is different than the character zero. So you can have the string, "June 30,
2020".

H e l l o \0

So the string "Hello" above takes 6 characters to store. One plus the length of the string.

To declare a variable to hold the above string we use

char helloStr[6] = "Hello";

To print it out we use "%s" in the format string:

printf("My string is: %s", helloStr);

To read in a string, we can use:

gets(helloStr);

STRCMP, STRCPY and STRLEN

STRCPY
Strings are not the same as primitive data types.

If we declare two strings

char s1[6] = "Larry";

char s2[6];

It would be nice to say

s2 = s1; // assign Larry to string s2. This doesn't work

or

s2 = "Moe"; //This doesn't work either

ICS3U Lesson 6 Using Strings In C Page 2 of 3

We can't treat strings like integers.

We must copy one string to another, and we have a function to do that

strcpy().

To use "strcpy" we must include "string.h".

strcpy(s2, s1); // this will put "Larry" into s2.

STRCMP
The string compare function uses the following syntax:

char s1[10];
char s2[10];
int result;
result = strcmp(s1,s2);

strcmp returns an integer: 0 if s1 and s2 are the same

1 if s1 > s2
-1 if s2 > s1

STRLEN
Strlen() returns the an integer stating the length of the string, not including the null
character at the end of the string.

char s1[10] = "Harry";

int length;
length = strlen(s1);

In this example, strlen will return the integer 5.

Questions:
What appears, internally at the end of every string?

How would you declare a variable to hold the string "Lisgar" with the least amount of
memory allocated?

Exercises:
1. Write a program that initializes two strings to your first and last names, and prints
them out, last name first.

2. Have the program read in your name. Allow 20 characters for first and last name.

3. Declare two strings s1, s2 as "Larry" and "Moe". Allow each name to hold 5
characters. Switch the contents of s1 and s2.
[Save as LASTNAME_Firstname Unit 1 Larry Moe]
ICS3U Lesson 6 Using Strings In C Page 3 of 3

4. Write a program that will read in 2 chars and print them in alphabetically order. The
syntax for the "if" statement is:

if (firstChar > secondChar) { // We will be learning if statement soon.

statements;

5. Write a program that will read in 2 strings that have a maximum of 30 characters and
print: [Save as LASTNAME_Firstname Unit 1 Longest String]
a. The longest one first
b. In alphabetically order

6. Enrichment question, what happens if

a. do the comparison (firstString < secondString)
b. do the assignment firstString = secondString)

7. Enrichment exercise:
a. Ask the user for two strings, determine if one string is contained in the other.
For example: "ample" "Example"
Print out "ample is contained in Example"

IF STATEMENT IN C

int n1 = 1;
int n2 = 2;
if ( n1 == n2) {
printf("They are equal");
}
else if (n1 > n2) {
printf("The first number is larger");
}

// Note there is no semicolon after the bracket containing the condition.

// There is no endif statement
// Curly brackets {} are not required if there is only one line of code within the if
// statement.
// Multiple else statements are permitted.