C Strings

Strings

Strings are used for storing text/characters.

For example, "Hello World" is a string of characters.

Unlike many other programming languages, C does not have a String type to easily create string variables. Instead, you must use the char type and create an array of characters to make a string in C:

Note that you have to use double quotes ("").

To output the string, you can use the printf() function together with the format specifier %s to tell C that we are now working with strings:

Access Strings

Since strings are actually arrays in C, you can access a string by referring to its index number inside square brackets [].

This example prints the first character (0) in greetings:

Modify Strings

To change the value of a specific character in a string, refer to the index number, and use single quotes:

Loop Through a String

You can also loop through the characters of a string, using a for loop:

Another Way Of Creating Strings

In the examples above, we used a "string literal" to create a string variable. This is the easiest way to create a string in C.

You should also note that you can create a string with a set of characters. This example will produce the same result as the example in the beginning of this page:

Differences

The difference between the two ways of creating strings, is that the first method is easier to write, and you do not have to include the \0 character, as C will do it for you.

You should note that the size of both arrays is the same: They both have 13 characters (space also counts as a character by the way), including the \0 character:

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