University of Science, VNU-HCM

Faculty of Information Technology

Fundamentals of Programming

String

Lecturer: Le Ngoc Thanh

Email: [email protected]

Rev.240901
HCM City 1
 String in C/C++
• C++ provides two types of string representations:
– The C-style character string (C-String)
– The string class type introduced with Standard C++.

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 Content
• C-style string
• String class
• Exercise

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 C-String
• The C-String originated within the C language
and continues to be supported within C++.
– String is nothing but an array of characters.
– Every string is terminated with '\0' (NULL)
character.
▪ A character array which is not null terminated is not a
valid C string.
▪ Null character marks the end of the string, it is the only
way for the compiler to know where this string is
ending.

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 Examples
“PROGRAM”

“c string tutorial”

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 Notes
• Note:
C-String length = array size – 1
• Example

char fullname[30];// 29 characters long

char datetime[9]; // 8 characters long

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 Declaration and Initialization
• A string can be declared as a character array or
with a string pointer.

char *greeting = “Hello” ;

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 Example

Note: %s is used to print a string

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Example

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 Note
• Initialize an array of characters at the moment it is being declared, and
not about assigning values to them later (once they have already been
declared).
– Because string literals are regular arrays, they have the same restrictions as these,
and cannot be assigned values.

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 Input and output for C-Strings
• Use the scanf() function to read a string and printf()
function to print a string like any other data types.
int scanf ( const char * format, ... );
int printf ( const char * format, ... );
– The scanf() function only takes the first entered word.
▪ The function terminates when it encounters a white space (or just space).

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Example

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 Input and output for C-Strings (cont)

• Can use cin and cout for IO C-String

– cin read and stop when it encounters a whitespace or
newline character, then automatically add the null
character '\0' at the end of the string.
– cout print all characters in the array until it encounters
the null character '\0’.

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 Quiz
• What will be the output of the following
code?

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 Quiz
• What will be the output of the following
code?

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 Input string with space
• Using gets() and puts()
– gets() function can get string to newline character.
– However, the most recent revision of the C standard (2011) has
definitively removed this function from its specification because it
not safe.

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 Input string with space

• Using getchar() to read a character

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 Input string with space
• Use the fgets function or cin.getline
– 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

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 Passing C-Strings to Functions
• C-Strings are just char arrays. So, they can be passed to a
function in a similar manner as arrays.

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 Library for manipulating string

• C-Strings handling functions are defined

under "string.h" or <cstring> header file.
– strlen
– strcpy
– strdup
– strlwr/strupr
– strrev
– strcmp/stricmp
– strcat
– strstr
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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

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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

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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”);

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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”

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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…”);

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 Quiz
• What will be the output of the following
code?

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 Content
• C-style string
• String class
• Exercise

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 C++ String class
• C++ provides a String class, you can also create a
objects of string class for holding strings.
– Large body of member functions
– Overloaded operators to simplify expressions
• To use C++ String Class, provide the appropriate
#include directive:

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 Features
• string features
– Not null terminated
– string not a pointer
– Many member functions take start position and
length
▪ If length argument too large, max chosen

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 Example
• The following instructions are all equivalent.

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 Notes
• No conversion from int or char
– The following definitions are errors
▪ string error1 = 'c';
▪ string error2( 'u' );
▪ string error3 = 22;
▪ string error4( 8 );
– However, can assign to one char if declared
▪ string s;
s = 'n';
s = 65;

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 Input and output
• Use insertion << and extraction >> operators
– Input delimited by white-space characters
• getline(cin, str) for reading a string and including
white spaces
– Note that cin >> str; will NOT get the whole line, but only
ONE word right before the space
– Input delimited by a newline ('\n‘)

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Example

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 string Operators
Operator Meaning
= Assignment
+ Concatenation
+= Concatenation assignment
== Equality
!= Inequality
< Less than
<= Less than or equal
> Greater than
>= Greater than or equal
>> Reads
<< Prints

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 Examples
• str2 = str1; // assigning a string
• str3 = str1 + str2; //concatenating strings
• if(str2 > str1) cout<<” str2 is bin“;//compares
• str1 = "This is a null-terminated string.\n";
• cin>>str1; //reads
• cout<<str1; //prints

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 More powerful
• Concatenation of Mixed-Style Strings.
For example, s = u + v + w, where s is of type
string, u can be:
– A string object, or
– a C-style string (a char array or a char pointer),
– a C-style char
– or a double-quoted string,
– or a single-quoted character.
However, at least u or v or w must be a string
object
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Example

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Example of string Comparisons

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 Index Operator []
• If x is a string object, and you wish to obtain the
value of the k-th character in the string, you write:
x[k];
• This feature makes string objects appear like
arrays of chars.

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string operations

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string operations

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string operations

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Example

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 Quiz
• What will be the output of the following
code?

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 Quiz
• What will be the output of the following
code?

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 Converting between std::string and C-style Strings

• Conversion to C-style String:

– To retrieve a C-style string (const char*) from a
std::string, use .c_str().

• Conversion from C-style String to std::string by

assignment operator:

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 Content
• C-style string
• String class
• Exercise

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 Exercises
• Exercise 1: read some other functions
– atoi, atol, atof : convert string to number (stdlib.h)
– 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.

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 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.

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The End