char c[] = "c string";

When the compiler encounters a sequence of characters enclosed in the double quotation marks, it appends a null character  at the end by default.

How to declare a string?

Here’s how you can declare strings:

char s[5];

How to initialize strings?

You can initialize strings in a number of ways.

char c[] = "abcd";

char c[50] = "abcd";

char c[] = {'a', 'b', 'c', 'd', ''};

char c[5] = {'a', 'b', 'c', 'd', ''};

Let’s take another example:

char c[5] = "abcde";

Here, we are trying to assign 6 characters (the last character is '') to a char array having 5 characters. This is bad and you should never do this.

Assigning Values to Strings

Arrays and strings are second-class citizens in C; they do not support the assignment operator once it is declared. For example,

char c[100];
c = "C programming";  // Error! array type is not assignable.

Note: Use the strcpy() function to copy the string instead.

Read String from the user

You can use the scanf() function to read a string.

The scanf() function reads the sequence of characters until it encounters whitespace (space, newline, tab, etc.).

Example 1: scanf() to read a string

#include <stdio.h>
int main(){
    char name[20];
    printf("Enter name: ");
    scanf("%s", name);
    printf("Your name is %s.", name);
    return 0;
}

Output

Enter name: Dennis Ritchie
Your name is Dennis.

Even though Dennis Ritchie was entered in the above program, only “Dennis” was stored in the name string. It’s because there was a space after Dennis.

How to read a line of text?

You can use the fgets() function to read a line of string. And, you can use puts() to display the string.

Example 2: fgets() and puts()

#include <stdio.h>
int main(){
    char name[30];
    printf("Enter name: ");
    fgets(name, sizeof(name), stdin);  // read string
    printf("Name: ");
    puts(name);    // display string
    return 0;
}

Output

Enter name: Tom Hanks
Name: Tom Hanks

Here, we have used fgets() function to read a string from the user.

fgets(name, sizeof(name), stdlin); // read string

The sizeof(name) results to 30. Hence, we can take a maximum of 30 characters as input which is the size of the name string.

To print the string, we have used puts(name);.

Note: The gets() function can also be to take input from the user. However, it is removed from the C standard.

It’s because gets() allows you to input any length of characters. Hence, there might be a buffer overflow.

Passing Strings to Functions

Strings can be passed to a function in a similar way as arrays. Learn more about passing arrays to a function.

Example 3: Passing string to a Function

#include <stdio.h>
void displayString(char str[]);

int main(){
    char str[50];
    printf("Enter string: ");
    fgets(str, sizeof(str), stdin);             
    displayString(str);     // Passing string to a function.    
    return 0;
}
void displayString(char str[]){
    printf("String Output: ");
    puts(str);
}

Strings and Pointers

Similar like arrays, string names are “decayed” to pointers. Hence, you can use pointers to manipulate elements of the string. We recommended you to check C Arrays and Pointers before you check this example.

Example 4: Strings and Pointers

#include <stdio.h>

int main(void){
  char name[] = "Harry Potter";

  printf("%c", *name);     // Output: H
  printf("%c", *(name+1));   // Output: a
  printf("%c", *(name+7));   // Output: o

  char *namePtr;

  namePtr = name;
  printf("%c", *namePtr);     // Output: H
  printf("%c", *(namePtr+1));   // Output: a
  printf("%c", *(namePtr+7));   // Output: o
}

Commonly Used String Functions

• strlen() – calculates the length of a string
• strcpy() – copies a string to another
• strcmp() – compares two strings
• strcat() – concatenates two strings