String in C Programming

What is strings?

String is a sequence of characters. In previous we know character is a single alphabet/number/sign within single quotes. But a string is made by one or more characters within double quotes.

Example, “Hello”, “I want to be a programmer” are different strings. Do you remember that you have used printf(“Hello World\n”); statement to print Hello World in your terminal by using C? There, which you have used withing double quotes is a string with whitespace.

Declaration of Strings

char string_name[string_size];

or

char string_name[string_size] = "STRING";

or
Example:

char str[11]="Bangladesh";

Size of string must be greater than total characters and 1. Because, there has one null character at last in character array string.
String Input Process:
Generally we can input in string in 3 ways.

1. By using scanf() function:

#include <stdio.h>
int main()
{
 char ch[40];
 scanf("%s",ch);
 printf("%s",ch);
 return 0;
}

Limitations: By using specifier %s scanf() function can input only one string. It can't input another string with whitespace. To solve this problem, we can use by replacing edit set conversion code or %[^\n] in %s.

Example: If we use the following statement, it can input more string with whitespace.

scanf("%[^\n]",ch);

Now run the following program in your c compiler.

#include <stdio.h>
int main()
{
    char ch[40];
    scanf("%[^\n]",ch);
    printf("%s\n",ch);
    return 0;
}

Remember, If you use scanf() function to input string, then you have to use only printf(), puts() to print this string. You can't use putchar() function.