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I'd like to write a function like this:
int validate_file_name(char *filename)
{
//...
}
which will:
return 1 if there was no \0 character in the filename,
0 otherwise.
I thought it may be achieved using a simple for(size_t i = 0; i < strlen(filename); i++), but I don't know how to determine how much characters I've got to check?
I can't use strlen() because it will terminate on the first occurrence of a \0 character.
How should I approach this problem?
Clarification:
I am trying to apply these guidelines to a filename I receive. If you should avoid putting a \0 in a filename, how could you validate this if you've got no size parameter.
Moreover, there are strings with multiple \0 characters, like here: http://www.gnu.org/software/libc/manual/html_mono/libc.html#Argz-and-Envz-Vectors. Still, I had no idea that it is impossible to determine their length if it is not explicitly provided.
Conclusion:
There is no way you can determine the length of string which is not NULL-terminated. Unless you know the length of course or you deploy some dirty hacks: Checking if a pointer is allocated memory or not.
You are trying to solve a problem that does not need to be solved.
A file name is a string. In C, a "string" is by definition "a contiguous sequence of characters terminated by and including the first null
character".
It is impossible to have a string or a file name with a null character embedded in it.
It's possible to have a sequence of characters with an embedded null character. For example:
char buf[] = "foo\0bar.txt";
buf is an array of 12 characters; the characters at positions 3 and 11 are both null characters. If you treat buf as a string, for example by calling
fopen(buf, "r")
it will be treated as a string with a length of 3 (the length of a string does not include the terminating null character).
If you're working with character arrays that may or may not contain strings, then it makes sense to do what you're asking. You would need to keep track of the size of the buffer separately from the address of the initial character, either by passing an additional argument or by wrapping the pointer and the length in a structure.
But if you're dealing with file names, it's almost certainly best just to deal with strings and assume that whatever char* value is passed to your function points to a valid string. If it doesn't (if there is no null character anywhere in the array), that's the caller's fault, and not something you can reasonably check.
(Incidentally, Unix/Linux file systems explicitly forbid null characters in file names. The / character is also forbidden, because it's used as a directory name delimiter. Windows file systems have even stricter rules.)
One last point: NULL is (a macro that expands to) a null pointer constant. Please don't use the term NULL to refer to the null character '\0'.
The answer is that you can't write a function that does that if you don't know the length of the string.
To determine the length of the string strlen() searches for the '\0' character which if is not present will cause undefined behavior.
If you knew the length of the string then,
for (int i = 0 ; i < length ; ++i)
{
if (string[i] != '\0')
continue;
return 1;
}
return 0;
would work, if you don't know the length of the string then the condition would be
for (int i = 0 ; string[i] != '\0' ; ++i)
which obviously means that then searching for the '\0' makes no sense because it's presence is what makes all other string related functions to work properly.
If the string is not NULL-terminated, what else it is terminated by? And if you don't know that, what is it length? If you know the answer to these problems, you know the answer to your question.
So I want to know how to store an actual character into an array.
char arr[4] = "sup!";
char backwards[4];
backwards[0] = *(arr + 3);
I guess my second question is if I do this, will, if i prompt a printf of backwards[0] using %c, will the actual character appear?
First off, let's fix your array size problem:
Character arrays in C are null-terminated: This means that you need to add space for a trailing \0 to terminate your string. You could use char arr[5] on the first line. (Note that if you are ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN you are NEVER going to use this array of characters with any of the C string handling functions, AND you assigned your characters individual as chars instead of as a string, this is not technically required. But save yourself some debugging time and use up the extra byte.) This is probably the source of your "weird error."
It seems like you know, but the other thing to bear in mind is in C, arrays are zero-based. This means that when you declare and array like char arr[4], you really get
arr[0]
arr[1]
arr[2]
arr[3]
C has no qualms about letting you walk off the end of your array and stomp on data or read in bad values. Here be dragons. Be careful.
Now, on to your actual questions:
1) You assign actual characters using single quotes arr[2]='x'; If you use double quotes, you are assigning a C string, which is null-terminated, as discussed.
2) Yes, printf with %c should do the trick.
Consider following case:
#include<stdio.h>
int main()
{
char A[5];
scanf("%s",A);
printf("%s",A);
}
My question is if char A[5] contains only two characters. Say "ab", then A[0]='a', A[1]='b' and A[2]='\0'.
But if the input is say, "abcde" then where is '\0' in that case. Will A[5] contain '\0'?
If yes, why?
sizeof(A) will always return 5 as answer. Then when the array is full, is there an extra byte reserved for '\0' which sizeof() doesn't count?
If you type more than four characters then the extra characters and the null terminator will be written outside the end of the array, overwriting memory not belonging to the array. This is a buffer overflow.
C does not prevent you from clobbering memory you don't own. This results in undefined behavior. Your program could do anything—it could crash, it could silently trash other variables and cause confusing behavior, it could be harmless, or anything else. Notice that there's no guarantee that your program will either work reliably or crash reliably. You can't even depend on it crashing immediately.
This is a great example of why scanf("%s") is dangerous and should never be used. It doesn't know about the size of your array which means there is no way to use it safely. Instead, avoid scanf and use something safer, like fgets():
fgets() reads in at most one less than size characters from stream and stores them into the buffer pointed to by s. Reading stops after an EOF or a newline. If a newline is read, it is stored into the buffer. A terminating null byte ('\0') is stored after the last character in the buffer.
Example:
if (fgets(A, sizeof A, stdin) == NULL) {
/* error reading input */
}
Annoyingly, fgets() will leave a trailing newline character ('\n') at the end of the array. So you may also want code to remove it.
size_t length = strlen(A);
if (A[length - 1] == '\n') {
A[length - 1] = '\0';
}
Ugh. A simple (but broken) scanf("%s") has turned into a 7 line monstrosity. And that's the second lesson of the day: C is not good at I/O and string handling. It can be done, and it can be done safely, but C will kick and scream the whole time.
As already pointed out - you have to define/allocate an array of length N + 1 in order to store N chars correctly. It is possible to limit the amount of characters read by scanf. In your example it would be:
scanf("%4s", A);
in order to read max. 4 chars from stdin.
character arrays in c are merely pointers to blocks of memory. If you tell the compiler to reserve 5 bytes for characters, it does. If you try to put more then 5 bytes in there, it will just overwrite the memory past the 5 bytes you reserved.
That is why c can have serious security implementations. You have to know that you are only going to write 4 characters + a \0. C will let you overwrite memory until the program crashes.
Please don't think of char foo[5] as a string. Think of it as a spot to put 5 bytes. You can store 5 characters in there without a null, but you have to remember you need to do a memcpy(otherCharArray, foo, 5) and not use strcpy. You also have to know that the otherCharArray has enough space for those 5 bytes.
You'll end up with undefined behaviour.
As you say, the size of A will always be 5, so if you read 5 or more chars, scanf will try to write to a memory, that it's not supposed to modify.
And no, there's no reserved space/char for the \0 symbol.
Any string greater than 4 characters in length will cause scanf to write beyond the bounds of the array. The resulting behavior is undefined and, if you're lucky, will cause your program to crash.
If you're wondering why scanf doesn't stop writing strings that are too long to be stored in the array A, it's because there's no way for scanf to know sizeof(A) is 5. When you pass an array as the parameter to a C function, the array decays to a pointer pointing to the first element in the array. So, there's no way to query the size of the array within the function.
In order to limit the number of characters read into the array use
scanf("%4s", A);
There isn't a character that is reserved, so you must be careful not to fill the entire array to the point it can't be null terminated. Char functions rely on the null terminator, and you will get disastrous results from them if you find yourself in the situation you describe.
Much C code that you'll see will use the 'n' derivatives of functions such as strncpy. From that man page you can read:
The strcpy() and strncpy() functions return s1. The stpcpy() and
stpncpy() functions return a
pointer to the terminating `\0' character of s1. If stpncpy() does not terminate s1 with a NUL
character, it instead returns a pointer to s1[n] (which does not necessarily refer to a valid mem-
ory location.)
strlen also relies on the null character to determine the length of a character buffer. If and when you're missing that character, you will get incorrect results.
the null character is used for the termination of array. it is at the end of the array and shows that the array is end at that point. the array automatically make last character as null character so that the compiler can easily understand that the array is ended.
\0 is an terminator operator which terminates itself when array is full
if array is not full then \0 will be at the end of the array
when you enter a string it will read from the end of the array
I have a little problem here with memcpy()
When I write this
char ipA[15], ipB[15];
size_t b = 15;
memcpy(ipA,line+15,b);
It copies b bytes from array line starting at 15th element (fine, this is what i want)
memcpy(ipB,line+31,b);
This copies b bytes from line starting at 31st element, but it also attaches to it the result for previous command i.e ipA.
Why? ipB size is 15, so it shouldnt have enough space to copy anything else. whats happening here?
result for ipA is 192.168.123.123
result for ipB becomes 205.123.123.122 192.168.123.123
Where am I wrong? I dont actually know alot about memory allocation in C.
It looks like you're not null-terminating the string in ipA. The compiler has put the two variables next to one another in memory, so string operations assume that the first null terminator is sometime after the second array (whenever the next 0 occurs in memory).
Try:
char ipA[16], ipB[16];
size_t b = 15;
memcpy(ipA,line+15,b);
ipA[15] = '\0';
memcpy(ipB,line+31,b);
ipB[15] = '\0';
printf("ipA: %s\nipB: %s\n", ipA, ipB)
This should confirm whether this is the problem. Obviously you could make the code a bit more elegant than my test code above. As an alternative to manually terminating, you could use printf("%.*s\n", b, ipA); or similar to force printf to print the correct number of characters.
Are you checking the content of the arrays by doing printf("%s", ipA) ? If so, you'll end up with the described effect since your array is interpreted as a C string which is not null terminated. Do this instead: printf("%.*s", sizeof(ipA), ipA)
Character strings in C require a terminating mark. It is the char value 0.
As your two character strings are contiguous in memory, if you don't terminate the first character string, then when reading it, you will continue until memory contains the end-of-string character.
I am new to C and I am very much confused with the C strings. Following are my questions.
Finding last character from a string
How can I find out the last character from a string? I came with something like,
char *str = "hello";
printf("%c", str[strlen(str) - 1]);
return 0;
Is this the way to go? I somehow think that, this is not the correct way because strlen has to iterate over the characters to get the length. So this operation will have a O(n) complexity.
Converting char to char*
I have a string and need to append a char to it. How can i do that? strcat accepts only char*. I tried the following,
char delimiter = ',';
char text[6];
strcpy(text, "hello");
strcat(text, delimiter);
Using strcat with variables that has local scope
Please consider the following code,
void foo(char *output)
{
char *delimiter = ',';
strcpy(output, "hello");
strcat(output, delimiter);
}
In the above code,delimiter is a local variable which gets destroyed after foo returned. Is it OK to append it to variable output?
How strcat handles null terminating character?
If I am concatenating two null terminated strings, will strcat append two null terminating characters to the resultant string?
Is there a good beginner level article which explains how strings work in C and how can I perform the usual string manipulations?
Any help would be great!
Last character: your approach is correct. If you will need to do this a lot on large strings, your data structure containing strings should store lengths with them. If not, it doesn't matter that it's O(n).
Appending a character: you have several bugs. For one thing, your buffer is too small to hold another character. As for how to call strcat, you can either put the character in a string (an array with 2 entries, the second being 0), or you can just manually use the length to write the character to the end.
Your worry about 2 nul terminators is unfounded. While it occupies memory contiguous with the string and is necessary, the nul byte at the end is NOT "part of the string" in the sense of length, etc. It's purely a marker of the end. strcat will overwrite the old nul and put a new one at the very end, after the concatenated string. Again, you need to make sure your buffer is large enough before you call strcat!
O(n) is the best you can do, because of the way C strings work.
char delimiter[] = ",";. This makes delimiter a character array holding a comma and a NUL Also, text needs to have length 7. hello is 5, then you have the comma, and a NUL.
If you define delimiter correctly, that's fine (as is, you're assigning a character to a pointer, which is wrong). The contents of output won't depend on delimiter later on.
It will overwrite the first NUL.
You're on the right track. I highly recommend you read K&R C 2nd Edition. It will help you with strings, pointers, and more. And don't forget man pages and documentation. They will answer questions like the one on strcat quite clearly. Two good sites are The Open Group and cplusplus.com.
A "C string" is in reality a simple array of chars, with str[0] containing the first character, str[1] the second and so on. After the last character, the array contains one more element, which holds a zero. This zero by convention signifies the end of the string. For example, those two lines are equivalent:
char str[] = "foo"; //str is 4 bytes
char str[] = {'f', 'o', 'o', 0};
And now for your questions:
Finding last character from a string
Your way is the right one. There is no faster way to know where the string ends than scanning through it to find the final zero.
Converting char to char*
As said before, a "string" is simply an array of chars, with a zero terminator added to the end. So if you want a string of one character, you declare an array of two chars - your character and the final zero, like this:
char str[2];
str[0] = ',';
str[1] = 0;
Or simply:
char str[2] = {',', 0};
Using strcat with variables that has local scope
strcat() simply copies the contents of the source array to the destination array, at the offset of the null character in the destination array. So it is irrelevant what happens to the source after the operation. But you DO need to worry if the destination array is big enough to hold the data - otherwise strcat() will overwrite whatever data sits in memory right after the array! The needed size is strlen(str1) + strlen(str2) + 1.
How strcat handles null terminating character?
The final zero is expected to terminate both input strings, and is appended to the output string.
Finding last character from a string
I propose a thought experiment: if it were generally possible to find the last character
of a string in better than O(n) time, then could you not also implement strlen
in better than O(n) time?
Converting char to char*
You temporarily can store the char in an array-of-char, and that will decay into
a pointer-to-char:
char delimiterBuf[2] = "";
delimiterBuf[0] = delimiter;
...
strcat(text, delimiterBuf);
If you're just using character literals, though, you can simply use string literals instead.
Using strcat with variables that has local scope
The variable itself isn't referenced outside the scope. When the function returns,
that local variable has already been evaluated and its contents have already been
copied.
How strcat handles null terminating character?
"Strings" in a C are NUL-terminated sequences of characters. Both inputs to
strcat must be NUL-terminated, and the result will be NUL-terminated. It
wouldn't be useful for strcat to write an extra NUL-byte to the result if it
doesn't need to.
(And if you're wondering what if the input strings have multiple trailing
NUL bytes already, I propose another thought experiment: how would strcat know
how many trailing NUL-bytes there are in a string?)
BTW, since you tagged this with "best-practices", I'll also recommend that you take care not to write past the end of your destination buffers. Typically this means avoiding strcat and strcpy (unless you've already checked that the input strings won't overflow the destination) and using safer versions (e.g. strncat. Note that strncpy has its own pitfalls, so that's a poor substitute. There also are safer versions that are non-standard, such as strlcpy/strlcat and strcpy_s/strcat_s.)
Similarly, functions like your foo function always should take an additional argument specifying what the size of the destination buffer is (and documentation should make it explicitly clear whether that size accounts for a NUL terminator or not).
How can I find out the last character
from a string?
Your technique with str[strlen(str) - 1] is fine. As pointed out, you should avoid repeated, unnecessary calls to strlen and store the results.
I somehow think that, this is not the
correct way because strlen has to
iterate over the characters to get the
length. So this operation will have a
O(n) complexity.
Repeated calls to strlen can be a bane of C programs. However, you should avoid premature optimization. If a profiler actually demonstrates a hotspot where strlen is expensive, then you can do something like this for your literal string case:
const char test[] = "foo";
sizeof test // 4
Of course if you create 'test' on the stack, it incurs a little overhead (incrementing/decrementing stack pointer), but no linear time operation involved.
Literal strings are generally not going to be so gigantic. For other cases like reading a large string from a file, you can store the length of the string in advance as but one example to avoid recomputing the length of the string. This can also be helpful as it'll tell you in advance how much memory to allocate for your character buffer.
I have a string and need to append a
char to it. How can i do that? strcat
accepts only char*.
If you have a char and cannot make a string out of it (char* c = "a"), then I believe you can use strncat (need verification on this):
char ch = 'a';
strncat(str, &ch, 1);
In the above code,delimiter is a local
variable which gets destroyed after
foo returned. Is it OK to append it to
variable output?
Yes: functions like strcat and strcpy make deep copies of the source string. They don't leave shallow pointers behind, so it's fine for the local data to be destroyed after these operations are performed.
If I am concatenating two null
terminated strings, will strcat
append two null terminating characters
to the resultant string?
No, strcat will basically overwrite the null terminator on the dest string and write past it, then append a new null terminator when it's finished.
How can I find out the last character from a string?
Your approach is almost correct. The only way to find the end of a C string is to iterate throught the characters, looking for the nul.
There is a bug in your answer though (in the general case). If strlen(str) is zero, you access the character before the start of the string.
I have a string and need to append a char to it. How can i do that?
Your approach is wrong. A C string is just an array of C characters with the last one being '\0'. So in theory, you can append a character like this:
char delimiter = ',';
char text[7];
strcpy(text, "hello");
int textSize = strlen(text);
text[textSize] = delimiter;
text[textSize + 1] = '\0';
However, if I leave it like that I'll get zillions of down votes because there are three places where I have a potential buffer overflow (if I didn't know that my initial string was "hello"). Before doing the copy, you need to put in a check that text is big enough to contain all the characters from the string plus one for the delimiter plus one for the terminating nul.
... delimiter is a local variable which gets destroyed after foo returned. Is it OK to append it to variable output?
Yes that's fine. strcat copies characters. But your code sample does no checks that output is big enough for all the stuff you are putting into it.
If I am concatenating two null terminated strings, will strcat append two null terminating characters to the resultant string?
No.
I somehow think that, this is not the correct way because strlen has to iterate over the characters to get the length. So this operation will have a O(n) complexity.
You are right read Joel Spolsky on why C-strings suck. There are few ways around it. The ways include either not using C strings (for example use Pascal strings and create your own library to handle them), or not use C (use say C++ which has a string class - which is slow for different reasons, but you could also write your own to handle Pascal strings more easily than in C for example)
Regarding adding a char to a C string; a C string is simply a char array with a nul terminator, so long as you preserve the terminator it is a string, there's no magic.
char* straddch( char* str, char ch )
{
char* end = &str[strlen(str)] ;
*end = ch ;
end++ ;
*end = 0 ;
return str ;
}
Just like strcat(), you have to know that the array that str is created in is long enough to accommodate the longer string, the compiler will not help you. It is both inelegant and unsafe.
If I am concatenating two null
terminated strings, will strcat append
two null terminating characters to the
resultant string?
No, just one, but what ever follows that may just happen to be nul, or whatever happened to be in memory. Consider the following equivalent:
char* my_strcat( char* s1, const char* s2 )
{
strcpy( &str[strlen(str)], s2 ) ;
}
the first character of s2 overwrites the terminator in s1.
In the above code,delimiter is a local
variable which gets destroyed after
foo returned. Is it OK to append it to
variable output?
In your example delimiter is not a string, and initialising a pointer with a char makes no sense. However if it were a string, the code would be fine, strcat() copies the data from the second string, so the lifetime of the second argument is irrelevant. Of course you could in your example use a char (not a char*) and the straddch() function suggested above.