How do I convert char pointer into a string?
I know it's a pointer to a string, but I don't want a pointer.
For example:
char* token;
char strings[50];
char strings[50] is a char string.
What is easiest way to turn *token into a string?
mbtowc turns *token in a single char, I don't want single char. Entire String.
The sad fact is that most C string library functions like strcpy(), strncpy() and memcpy() are somewhat lacking in terms of safely, reliably, and/or simply copying a C string into a char array.
Here's one way to do it:
size_t len = strlen(token);
if (len < sizeof(strings)) {
memcpy(strings, token, len); // assumes token doesn't point inside strings, else use memmove()
strings[len] = '\0';
} else {
// input string was too long, handle the error somehow
}
As you can imagine, many projects implemented in C will define a few functions to handle C strings efficiently in whatever way they need, with appropriate error handling.
/*until C99*/
char *token = "test";
char strings[50];
/* copy to sized buffer: */
strncpy ( strings, token, sizeof(strings) );
strings[sizeof(strings) - 1] = 0;
/*since C11*/
char *token = "test";
char strings[50];
/* returns zero on success, returns non-zero on error.*/
int r1 = strncpy_s(strings, sizeof(strings), token, strlen(token));
/*use strlen_s if not sure whether token is not null poiter*/
I have a const char* string, I want to copy that string character by character to dynamic `char*.
const char *constStr = "Hello world";
char *str = (char*) malloc(strlen(constStr)+1);
while(*constStr){
*str = *constStr;
constStr++;
str++;
}
printf("%s", str);
free(str);
The problem is that previous code just copies each character of constStr to only the first index of the str. I don't know why?
As others have pointed out, you are incrementing str pointer in each iteration, so you always end up printing the end of the string.
You can instead iterate over each character without incrementing the pointer. The following code worked for me:
const char *constStr = "Hello world";
int len = strlen(constStr);
char *str = (char *) malloc(len + 1);
int i;
for (i = 0; i <= len; ++i) {
str[i] = constStr[i];
}
printf("%s", str);
free(str);
Yes you didn't null terminate the string. That was the primary problem. To be more clear, it is not that you didn't nul terminate the string which is the problem but rather your use of them where a pointer to a nul terminated char array is expected is the problem. But even if you did there was significant amount of problems in the code.
You allocated the memory and the casted the return value of malloc which is unnecessary. void* to char* conversion is implicitly done.
malloc might not be able to service the request, it might return a null pointer. It is important to
check for this to prevent later attempts to dereference the null pointer.
Then you started copying - you copied everything except the NUL terminating character. And then you passed it to printf's %s format specifier which expects a pointer to a null terminated char array. This is undefined behavior.
The one position, in the str is uninitialized - beware that accessing uninitialized value may lead to undefined behavior.
Also there is another problem, From standard §7.22.3.3
The free function causes the space pointed to by ptr to be deallocated, that is, made available for further allocation. If ptr is a null pointer, no action occurs. Otherwise, if the argument does not match a pointer earlier returned by a memory management function, or if the space has been deallocated by a call to free or realloc, the behavior is undefined.
Yes so is is the case here? No. when you called free(str) str is not pointing to the dynamically allocated memory returned by the malloc. This is again undefined behavior.
The solution always is to keep a pointer which stores the address of the allocated chunk. The other answers already showed them (without repeating them - both of them provides a good solution).
You can use strdup or strcpy also - even if you don't need them now - get accustomed with them. It helps to know those. And yes strdup is not part of standard, it is a POSIX standard thing.
Example:
const char *constStr = "Hello world";
char *str = malloc(strlen(constStr)+1);
if( !str ){
perror("malloc");
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
char *sstr = str;
while(*constStr){
*str = *constStr;
constStr++;
str++;
}
*str = 0;
printf("%s", sstr);
free(sstr);
Here's the "classical" string copy solution:
const char *constStr = "Hello world";
char *str = malloc(strlen(constStr) + 1), *p = str;
/* Do not forget to check if str!=NULL !*/
while((*p++ = *constStr++));
puts(str);
The problem is that previous code just copies each character of
constStr to only the first index of the str. I don't know why?
Use index variable.
Don't forget terminating '\0' because you have a good chance of segmentation fault.
Here is my code :
char *name, name_log="log-";
------getting 'name' from user-----
strcat(name_log, name);
char ext[] = ".log";
strcat(name_log, ext);
What i need to end up with is name_log = "log-'name'.log" but Im getting a segmentation fault error :((. What am I doing wrong and how can I fix it ? Thx
For a start, if this is your code:
char *name, name_log="log-";
then name_log is a char, not a char pointer.
Assuming that's a typo, you cannot append to string literals like that. Modifications to string literals are undefined behaviour.
For a variable sized string, as user appears to be, probably the safest option is to allocate another string large enough to hold the result, something like:
char *name, *name_log = "log-", *ext = ".log";
// Do something to allocate and populate name
char *buffer = malloc (strlen (name_log) + strlen (name) + strlen (ext) + 1);
if (buffer == NULL) {
// Out of memory.
} else {
strcpy (buffer, name_log);
strcat (buffer, name);
strcat (buffer, ext);
// Do something with buffer.
free (buffer);
}
The malloc ensures you have enough space to do all the string operations safely, enough characters for the three components plus a null terminator.
string literals get allocated a fixed amount of memory, generally in a read only section, you instead need to use a buffer.
char buffer[64] = "log-";
strncat(buffer,".log",32);
On a side note, strcat is generally unsafe, you need to use something that that checks the size of the buffer it uses or with limits on what it can concatenate, like strncat.
A completely different solution would be this:
const char *prefix = "log-";
const char *suffix = ".log";
// There's a "char *name" somewhere
int size_needed;
char *result;
size_needed = snprintf(NULL, 0, "%s%s%s", prefix, name, suffix);
result = malloc(size_needed + 1);
snprintf(result, size_needed + 1, "%s%s%s", prefix, name, suffix);
// "result" now contains the desired string.
The nice thing about snprintf is that it returns the number of characters it would write if there was enough space. This can be used by measuring upfront how much memory to allocate which makes complicated and error-prone calculations unnecessary.
If you happen to be on a system with asprintf, it's even easier:
char *result = NULL /* in case asprintf fails */;
asprintf(&result, "log-%s.log", name);
// "result" must be released with "free"
you need to allcocate memory. You cannot add to a string in this way as the string added goes to memory which hasnt been allocated.
you can do
char[20] strarray;
strcat(strarray, "log-");
strcat(strarray, "abcd");
the name_log is pointed at a static place: "log-", which means is could not be modified, while as the first parameter in strcat(), it must be modifiable.
try changing name_log's type char* into char[], e.g.
char[20] name_log = "log-";
Can u Give solution for this code of typecasting, LPCTSTR(here lpsubkey) to Char*
for below code snippet ,
char* s="HKEY_CURRENT_USER\\";
strcat(s,(char*)lpSubKey);
printf("%S",s);
here it makes error of access violation ,so what will be the solution for that?.
...thanks in advance
There are several issues with your code that might well lead to the access violation. I don't think any have anything to do with the cast you mentioned.
You are assigning a pointer to the first element of a fixed size char array to a char * and then attempt to append to this using strcat. This is wrong as there is no additional space left in the implicitly allocated string array. You will need to allocate a buffer big enough to hold the resulting string and then copy the string constant in there before calling strcat. For example, like so:
char *s = (char*)malloc(1024 * sizeof(char));
strcpy(s, "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\\");
strcat(s, T2A(lpSubKey));
printf("%s", s);
free(s);
Please note that the fixed size array I'm allocating above is bad practise. In production code you should always determine the correct size of the array on the go to prevent buffer overflows or use functions like strncat and strncpy to ensure that you are not copying more data into the buffer than the buffer can hold.
These are not the same thing. What are you trying to do?
The problem is you are trying to append to a string that you have not reserved memory for.
Try:
char s[1024] = "HKEY_CURRENT_USER";
strcat(s,(char*)lpSubKey );
printf("%S",s);
Do be careful with the arbitrary size of 1024. If you expect your keys to be much longer your program will crash.
Also, look at strcat_s.
ATL and MFC has set of macros to such conversion, where used next letters:
W - wide unicode string
T - generic character string
A - ANSI character string
OLE - BSTR string,
so in your case you need T2A macros
strcat does not attempt to make room for the combination. You are overwriting memory that isn't part of the string. Off the top of my head:
char *strcat_with_alloc(char *s1, char *s2)
{
if (!s1 || !s2) return NULL;
size_t len1 = strlen(s1);
size_t len2 = strlen(s2);
char *dest = (char *)malloc(len1 + len2 + 1);
if (!dest) return NULL;
strcpy(dest, s1);
strcat(dest, s2);
return dest;
}
now try:
char* s="HKEY_CURRENT_USER\\";
char *fullKey = strcat_with_alloc(s,(char*)lpSubKey);
if (!fullKey)
printf("error no memory");
else {
printf("%S",fullKey);
free(fullKey);
}
I'm working in C, and I have to concatenate a few things.
Right now I have this:
message = strcat("TEXT ", var);
message2 = strcat(strcat("TEXT ", foo), strcat(" TEXT ", bar));
Now if you have experience in C I'm sure you realize that this gives you a segmentation fault when you try to run it. So how do I work around that?
In C, "strings" are just plain char arrays. Therefore, you can't directly concatenate them with other "strings".
You can use the strcat function, which appends the string pointed to by src to the end of the string pointed to by dest:
char *strcat(char *dest, const char *src);
Here is an example from cplusplus.com:
char str[80];
strcpy(str, "these ");
strcat(str, "strings ");
strcat(str, "are ");
strcat(str, "concatenated.");
For the first parameter, you need to provide the destination buffer itself. The destination buffer must be a char array buffer. E.g.: char buffer[1024];
Make sure that the first parameter has enough space to store what you're trying to copy into it. If available to you, it is safer to use functions like: strcpy_s and strcat_s where you explicitly have to specify the size of the destination buffer.
Note: A string literal cannot be used as a buffer, since it is a constant. Thus, you always have to allocate a char array for the buffer.
The return value of strcat can simply be ignored, it merely returns the same pointer as was passed in as the first argument. It is there for convenience, and allows you to chain the calls into one line of code:
strcat(strcat(str, foo), bar);
So your problem could be solved as follows:
char *foo = "foo";
char *bar = "bar";
char str[80];
strcpy(str, "TEXT ");
strcat(str, foo);
strcat(str, bar);
Avoid using strcat in C code. The cleanest and, most importantly, the safest way is to use snprintf:
char buf[256];
snprintf(buf, sizeof(buf), "%s%s%s%s", str1, str2, str3, str4);
Some commenters raised an issue that the number of arguments may not match the format string and the code will still compile, but most compilers already issue a warning if this is the case.
Strings can also be concatenated at compile time.
#define SCHEMA "test"
#define TABLE "data"
const char *table = SCHEMA "." TABLE ; // note no + or . or anything
const char *qry = // include comments in a string
" SELECT * " // get all fields
" FROM " SCHEMA "." TABLE /* the table */
" WHERE x = 1 " /* the filter */
;
Folks, use strncpy(), strncat(), or snprintf().
Exceeding your buffer space will trash whatever else follows in memory!
(And remember to allow space for the trailing null '\0' character!)
Also malloc and realloc are useful if you don't know ahead of time how many strings are being concatenated.
#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
void example(const char *header, const char **words, size_t num_words)
{
size_t message_len = strlen(header) + 1; /* + 1 for terminating NULL */
char *message = (char*) malloc(message_len);
strncat(message, header, message_len);
for(int i = 0; i < num_words; ++i)
{
message_len += 1 + strlen(words[i]); /* 1 + for separator ';' */
message = (char*) realloc(message, message_len);
strncat(strncat(message, ";", message_len), words[i], message_len);
}
puts(message);
free(message);
}
Best way to do it without having a limited buffer size is by using asprintf()
char* concat(const char* str1, const char* str2)
{
char* result;
asprintf(&result, "%s%s", str1, str2);
return result;
}
If you have experience in C you will notice that strings are only char arrays where the last character is a null character.
Now that is quite inconvenient as you have to find the last character in order to append something. strcat will do that for you.
So strcat searches through the first argument for a null character. Then it will replace this with the second argument's content (until that ends in a null).
Now let's go through your code:
message = strcat("TEXT " + var);
Here you are adding something to the pointer to the text "TEXT" (the type of "TEXT" is const char*. A pointer.).
That will usually not work. Also modifying the "TEXT" array will not work as it is usually placed in a constant segment.
message2 = strcat(strcat("TEXT ", foo), strcat(" TEXT ", bar));
That might work better, except that you are again trying to modify static texts. strcat is not allocating new memory for the result.
I would propose to do something like this instead:
sprintf(message2, "TEXT %s TEXT %s", foo, bar);
Read the documentation of sprintf to check for it's options.
And now an important point:
Ensure that the buffer has enough space to hold the text AND the null character. There are a couple of functions that can help you, e.g., strncat and special versions of printf that allocate the buffer for you.
Not ensuring the buffer size will lead to memory corruption and remotely exploitable bugs.
Do not forget to initialize the output buffer. The first argument to strcat must be a null terminated string with enough extra space allocated for the resulting string:
char out[1024] = ""; // must be initialized
strcat( out, null_terminated_string );
// null_terminated_string has less than 1023 chars
As people pointed out string handling improved much. So you may want to learn how to use the C++ string library instead of C-style strings. However here is a solution in pure C
#include <string.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
void appendToHello(const char *s) {
const char *const hello = "hello ";
const size_t sLength = strlen(s);
const size_t helloLength = strlen(hello);
const size_t totalLength = sLength + helloLength;
char *const strBuf = malloc(totalLength + 1);
if (strBuf == NULL) {
fprintf(stderr, "malloc failed\n");
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
strcpy(strBuf, hello);
strcpy(strBuf + helloLength, s);
puts(strBuf);
free(strBuf);
}
int main (void) {
appendToHello("blah blah");
return 0;
}
I am not sure whether it is correct/safe but right now I could not find a better way to do this in ANSI C.
It is undefined behaviour to attempt to modify string literals, which is what something like:
strcat ("Hello, ", name);
will attempt to do. It will try to tack on the name string to the end of the string literal "Hello, ", which is not well defined.
Try something this. It achieves what you appear to be trying to do:
char message[1000];
strcpy (message, "TEXT ");
strcat (message, var);
This creates a buffer area that is allowed to be modified and then copies both the string literal and other text to it. Just be careful with buffer overflows. If you control the input data (or check it before-hand), it's fine to use fixed length buffers like I have.
Otherwise, you should use mitigation strategies such as allocating enough memory from the heap to ensure you can handle it. In other words, something like:
const static char TEXT[] = "TEXT ";
// Make *sure* you have enough space.
char *message = malloc (sizeof(TEXT) + strlen(var) + 1);
if (message == NULL)
handleOutOfMemoryIntelligently();
strcpy (message, TEXT);
strcat (message, var);
// Need to free message at some point after you're done with it.
The first argument of strcat() needs to be able to hold enough space for the concatenated string. So allocate a buffer with enough space to receive the result.
char bigEnough[64] = "";
strcat(bigEnough, "TEXT");
strcat(bigEnough, foo);
/* and so on */
strcat() will concatenate the second argument with the first argument, and store the result in the first argument, the returned char* is simply this first argument, and only for your convenience.
You do not get a newly allocated string with the first and second argument concatenated, which I'd guess you expected based on your code.
You can write your own function that does the same thing as strcat() but that doesn't change anything:
#define MAX_STRING_LENGTH 1000
char *strcat_const(const char *str1,const char *str2){
static char buffer[MAX_STRING_LENGTH];
strncpy(buffer,str1,MAX_STRING_LENGTH);
if(strlen(str1) < MAX_STRING_LENGTH){
strncat(buffer,str2,MAX_STRING_LENGTH - strlen(buffer));
}
buffer[MAX_STRING_LENGTH - 1] = '\0';
return buffer;
}
int main(int argc,char *argv[]){
printf("%s",strcat_const("Hello ","world")); //Prints "Hello world"
return 0;
}
If both strings together are more than 1000 characters long, it will cut the string at 1000 characters. You can change the value of MAX_STRING_LENGTH to suit your needs.
You are trying to copy a string into an address that is statically allocated. You need to cat into a buffer.
Specifically:
...snip...
destination
Pointer to the destination array, which should contain a C string, and be large enough to contain the concatenated resulting string.
...snip...
http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/clibrary/cstring/strcat.html
There's an example here as well.
Assuming you have a char[fixed_size] rather than a char*, you can use a single, creative macro to do it all at once with a <<cout<<like ordering ("rather %s the disjointed %s\n", "than", "printf style format"). If you are working with embedded systems, this method will also allow you to leave out malloc and the large *printf family of functions like snprintf() (This keeps dietlibc from complaining about *printf too)
#include <unistd.h> //for the write example
//note: you should check if offset==sizeof(buf) after use
#define strcpyALL(buf, offset, ...) do{ \
char *bp=(char*)(buf+offset); /*so we can add to the end of a string*/ \
const char *s, \
*a[] = { __VA_ARGS__,NULL}, \
**ss=a; \
while((s=*ss++)) \
while((*s)&&(++offset<(int)sizeof(buf))) \
*bp++=*s++; \
if (offset!=sizeof(buf))*bp=0; \
}while(0)
char buf[256];
int len=0;
strcpyALL(buf,len,
"The config file is in:\n\t",getenv("HOME"),"/.config/",argv[0],"/config.rc\n"
);
if (len<sizeof(buf))
write(1,buf,len); //outputs our message to stdout
else
write(2,"error\n",6);
//but we can keep adding on because we kept track of the length
//this allows printf-like buffering to minimize number of syscalls to write
//set len back to 0 if you don't want this behavior
strcpyALL(buf,len,"Thanks for using ",argv[0],"!\n");
if (len<sizeof(buf))
write(1,buf,len); //outputs both messages
else
write(2,"error\n",6);
Note 1, you typically wouldn't use argv[0] like this - just an example
Note 2, you can use any function that outputs a char*, including nonstandard functions like itoa() for converting integers to string types.
Note 3, if you are already using printf anywhere in your program there is no reason not to use snprintf(), since the compiled code would be larger (but inlined and significantly faster)
int main()
{
char input[100];
gets(input);
char str[101];
strcpy(str, " ");
strcat(str, input);
char *p = str;
while(*p) {
if(*p == ' ' && isalpha(*(p+1)) != 0)
printf("%c",*(p+1));
p++;
}
return 0;
}
Try something similar to this:
#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
int main(int argc, const char * argv[])
{
// Insert code here...
char firstname[100], secondname[100];
printf("Enter First Name: ");
fgets(firstname, 100, stdin);
printf("Enter Second Name: ");
fgets(secondname,100,stdin);
firstname[strlen(firstname)-1]= '\0';
printf("fullname is %s %s", firstname, secondname);
return 0;
}
This was my solution
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdarg.h>
char *strconcat(int num_args, ...) {
int strsize = 0;
va_list ap;
va_start(ap, num_args);
for (int i = 0; i < num_args; i++)
strsize += strlen(va_arg(ap, char*));
char *res = malloc(strsize+1);
strsize = 0;
va_start(ap, num_args);
for (int i = 0; i < num_args; i++) {
char *s = va_arg(ap, char*);
strcpy(res+strsize, s);
strsize += strlen(s);
}
va_end(ap);
res[strsize] = '\0';
return res;
}
but you need to specify how many strings you're going to concatenate
char *str = strconcat(3, "testing ", "this ", "thing");