Finding the Length of a String in C: A Practical Tutorial

In this tutorial, we will learn how to find the length of a string in C using the strlen() function provided by the string.h header file in the C standard library.

To get started, make sure you have included the string.h and stdio.h header files in your program. These files contain the necessary functions and definitions for string manipulation and input/output operations.

The strlen() function takes a string as its argument and returns the length of that string as an integer value. Let’s see an example:

char name[7] = "Flavio";
int length = strlen(name);

In this example, we have declared a character array name with a size of 7 and initialized it with the string “Flavio”. We then use the strlen() function to find the length of the name string and store it in the length variable.

To see the strlen() function in action, let’s look at a complete working example:

#include <string.h>
#include <stdio.h>

int main(void) {
    char name[7] = "Flavio";
    int length = strlen(name);
    printf("Name length: %u", length);
    return 0;
}

In this example, we include the necessary header files string.h and stdio.h. We then declare a character array name with a size of 7 and initialize it with the string “Flavio”. Next, we use the strlen() function to obtain the length of the name string and assign it to the length variable.

Finally, we use the printf() function to display the length of the string. The %u format specifier is used to print the unsigned integer value stored in the length variable.

By following these steps, you can easily find the length of a string in C using the strlen() function. Understanding string manipulation in C is essential for various programming tasks involving strings, such as string comparison and concatenation.

Tags: C programming, string length, strlen(), string manipulation