C - Strings and the Assignment Operator
In C, strings are typically manipulated using character arrays or pointers to characters. The assignment operator (=
) is used to assign strings to character arrays or to copy the contents of one character array to another. However, it's important to note that strings in C are null-terminated, meaning they are terminated by a null character ('\0'
) to indicate the end of the string.
1. Assigning a String Literal to a Character Array:
char myString[20];
myString = "Hello, World!"; // This is NOT valid
The code above is not valid because you cannot assign a string literal to an entire character array using the assignment operator. You need to use the strcpy
function to copy the string:
char myString[20];
strcpy(myString, "Hello, World!"); // Copy the string to myString
2. Assigning the Contents of One Character Array to Another:
char source[] = "Source String";
char destination[20];
destination = source; // This is NOT valid
The code above is not valid because you cannot assign the contents of one character array to another using the assignment operator. To copy the contents, you need to use the strcpy
function or a loop to copy each character individually:
char source[] = "Source String";
char destination[20];
strcpy(destination, source); // Copy the contents of source to destination
3. Assigning Character Arrays to Pointers:
char myString[] = "Hello, World!";
char *strPtr;
strPtr = myString; // Assign the address of myString to strPtr
In this case, strPtr
now points to the beginning of the string stored in myString
.
In summary, when working with strings in C, it's important to use the appropriate functions like strcpy to copy strings between character arrays and to assign character arrays to pointers if you want to work with the address of the string. The assignment operator alone is not sufficient for string manipulation in C.