In C, a string is an array with two special properties. First, a string is made up of only characters. Second, the string must conclude with an essential terminating character—the null character. While some would say strings are one of C's weakest features, I disagree with that assessment. Because strings build on already-established mechanisms, I believe that they are rather elegant in an unexpected way.

Not all values that we might want to manipulate in a program are numbers. Often, we need to manipulate words, phrases, and sentences; these are built from strings of characters. We have been performing output using simple strings in printf() statements. In order to perform the input of strings and numbers, we need to be able to further manipulate strings to convert them into values. In this chapter, the elements and building blocks of C strings will be explored, as well as various ways...