How to declare strings in C

Question

Can anyone explain me what is a difference between these lines of code  char  p    String   char p2      String   char p3 7     String     In what case should I use each of the above

User · Answer

Strings in C are represented as arrays of characters.

char *p = "String";

You are declaring a pointer that points to a string stored some where in your program (modifying this string is undefined behavior) according to the C programming language 2 ed.

char p2[] = "String";

You are declaring an array of char initialized with the string "String" leaving to the compiler the job to count the size of the array.

char p3[5] = "String";

You are declaring an array of size 5 and initializing it with "String". This is an error be cause "String" don't fit in 5 elements.

char p3[7] = "String"; is the correct declaration ('\0' is the terminating character in c strings).

http://c-faq.com/~scs/cclass/notes/sx8.html

User · Answer

This link should satisfy your curiosity   Basically  forgetting your third example which is bad   the different between 1 and 2 is that 1 allocates space for a pointer to the array   But in the code  you can manipulate them as pointers all the same -- only thing  you cannot reallocate the second

User · Answer

You shouldn t use the third one because its wrong   String  takes 7 bytes  not 5   The first one is a pointer  can be reassigned to a different address   the other two are declared as arrays  and cannot be reassigned to different memory locations  but their content may change  use const to avoid that

User · Answer

char  p    String     means pointer to a string type variable    char p3 5     String    means you are pre-defining the size of the array to consist of no more than 5 elements  Note that for strings the null   0  is also considered as an element So this statement would give an error since the number of elements is 7 so it should be   char p3 7    String

[c] How to declare strings in C

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