Character Strings

The char type may be used for integer values and for single literals:

char c = 'x';
char a = 3;

A character string is a series of one or more chracters ending with the null character (ASCII 0); double quotes are used for the string:

#define NAME "A.Nussbaumer"

The following syntax is used for string variables:

char path[] = "public_html/c++";

You may specify the string's size:

char firstname[50];

Example

The following example demonstrates the usage of input and output and how to find the length of a string:

#include <iostream.h>
#include <string.h>

char name[50];

main() {
  cout << "Tell me your name... ";
  cin >> name;
  cout << "Hi " << name << '!' << endl;
  cout << "length: " << strlen(name) << endl;
  return 0;
}

Here is a sample run:

alfred@duron:~/cpp> g++ inout.cpp -o inout
alfred@duron:~/cpp> ./inout
Tell me your name... Alfred
Hi Alfred!
length: 6
alfred@duron:~/cpp> 

Searching for Substrings

The function strstr(str1, str2) returns a pointer to the first occurence of the string str2. The header file string.h is required.

#include <iostream.h>
#include <string.h>

int main() {
  char yourstring[100] = "Linux is cool";
  cout << strstr(yourstring, "cool") << endl;
}

cool

Concatenating Strings

The function strcat(str1, str2) concatenates str1 and str2 (the header file string.h is required).

#include <iostream.h>
#include <string.h>

int main() {
  char w1[7] = "Linux ";
  char w2[4] = "is ";
  char w3[6] = "cool ";
  char resultstring[128]="";

  strcat(resultstring, w1);
  strcat(resultstring, w2);
  strcat(resultstring, w3);
  cout << resultstring << endl;
}

Linux is cool