C++ Primer Plus

A string is a series of characters stored in consecutive bytes of memory. C++ has two ways of dealing with strings. The first, taken from C and often called a C-style string, is the first one this chapter examines. Later, this chapter discusses an alternative method based on a string class library.

The idea of a series of characters stored in consecutive bytes implies that you can store a string in an array of char, with each character kept in its own array element. Strings provide a convenient way to store text information, such as messages to the user (“Please tell me your secret Swiss bank account number”) or responses from the user (“You must be joking”). C-style strings have a special feature: The last character of every string is the null character. This character, written \0, is the character with ASCII code 0, and it serves to mark the string’s end. For example, consider the following two declarations:

char dog[8] = { 'b', 'e', 'a', 'u', 'x', ' ', 'I', 'I'};       // not a string!

char cat[8] = {'f', 'a', 't', 'e', 's', 's', 'a', '\0'};       // a string!

Both of these arrays are arrays of char, but only the second is a string. The null character plays a fundamental role in C-style strings. For example, C++ has many functions that handle strings, including those used by cout. They all work by processing a string character-by-character until they reach the null character. If you ask cout to display a nice string like cat in the preceding example, it displays the first seven characters, detects the null character, and stops. But if you are ungracious enough to tell cout to display the dog array from the preceding example, which is not a string, cout prints the eight letters in the array and then keeps marching through memory byte-by-byte, interpreting each byte as a character to print, until it reaches a null character. Because null characters, which really are bytes set to zero, tend to be common in memory, the damage is usually contained quickly; nonetheless, you should not treat nonstring character arrays as strings.

The cat array example makes initializing an array to a string look tedious—all those single quotes and then having to remember the null character. Don’t worry. There is a better way to initialize a character array to a string. Just use a quoted string, called a string constant or string literal, as in the following:

char bird[11] = "Mr. Cheeps";     // the \0 is understood

char fish[] = "Bubbles";          // let the compiler count

Quoted strings always include the terminating null character implicitly, so you don’t have to spell it out (see Figure 4.2). Also the various C++ input facilities for reading a string from keyboard input into a char array automatically add the terminating null character for you. (If, when you run the program in Listing 4.1, you discover that you have to use the keyword static to initialize an array, you have to use it with these char arrays, too.)

Figure 4.2. Initializing an array to a string.

Of course, you should make sure the array is large enough to hold all the characters of the string, including the null character. Initializing a character array with a string constant is one case where it may be safer to let the compiler count the number of elements for you. There is no harm, other than wasted space, in making an array larger than the string. That’s because functions that work with strings are guided by the location of the null character, not by the size of the array. C++ imposes no limits on the length of a string.

Caution

When determining the minimum array size necessary to hold a string, remember to include the terminating null character in your count.

Note that a string constant (with double quotes) is not interchangeable with a character constant (with single quotes). A character constant, such as 'S', is a shorthand notation for the code for a character. On an ASCII system, 'S' is just another way of writing 83. Thus, the following statement assigns the value 83 to shirt_size:

char shirt_size = 'S';          // this is fine

But "S" is not a character constant; it represents the string consisting of two characters, the S and the \0 characters. Even worse, "S" actually represents the memory address at which the string is stored. So a statement like the following attempts to assign a memory address to shirt_size:

char shirt_size = "S";         // illegal type mismatch

Because an address is a separate type in C++, a C++ compiler won’t allow this sort of nonsense. (We’ll return to this point later in this chapter after we’ve discussed pointers.)

Concatenating String Literals