Introduction To Strings

Introduction To Strings

The way a group of integers can be stored in an integer array, similarly a group of characters can be stored in a character array . Character array are often called strings.A string constant is a one-dimensional array of characters terminated by a null('\0').The ASCII value of ('\0') is 0.

 Each character in the array occupies one byte of memory and the last character is always'\0'.
  The following example illustrates how a string is stored and accessed
main()
{
 static char name[]="Nagpur";
 int i=0;
 while (name[i]!='\0')
 {
  printf("%c",name[i]);
  i++;
 }
}
  A string can also be initialized as
      static char[]="Nagpur";

    Here '\0' is not necessary . C inserts it automatically.The terminating null('\0') is important,because it is the only way the functions that work with a string can know where the string ends.

Declaring and Initializing string variables:
         A string variable is any valid c variable name and is always declared as an array .The general form of declaration of a string variable is: char string_name [size];
   The size determines the number of characters in the string_name.The size should be equal to the maximum number of  characters in the string plus one.'C' permits a character array to be initialized in either of the following two forms
   static char city[9] = "Newyork";
   static char city[9] = {'N','E','W','Y','O','R','K','\0'};