Handmade Network»Forums
117 posts
Code hacker/developer
Decent string lib for C?
Edited by Todd on
One of the things that C seems to be inherently weaker at is working with strings in a higher-level fashion. Python and similar languages have the .contains(), .split(), etc... functionality that C doesn't have by default and even if it's implemented, it tends to be more cumbersome to work with strings in C. Also the ability to do for s in my_strings { //do stuff} is very handy.

That all said, does anyone know of a good C string library or two? It's a bummer because I know C pretty well but I end up having to resort to other languages for small work projects just because it takes too long to get off the ground in C for these small utility projects that I often need to work on.

The downside to some of the other languages though is loss of power so I really would consider making some of these tools in C if I had access to better libraries that could help me get more done.
Mārtiņš Možeiko
2559 posts / 2 projects
Decent string lib for C?
Edited by Mārtiņš Možeiko on
From simpler, single/two file libraries:
Simple Dynamic Strings
Better String Library

A bit more header files, but more functionality:
µstr - Micro String API

For more universal strings (supports full unicode), but much more heavier:
ICU

TM
13 posts
Decent string lib for C?
As a general purpose string library rapidstring looks promising. It emulates the ease of std::string for C while being a lot faster at it. But it doesn't have contains/split etc (doesn't need to).

As to C not having contains/split, that is not necessarily true, it is just that the standard library of C doesn't have the most user friendly interface. You should look into the standard header string.h and its use case.

"Find" is strstr.
"Find a single char" is strchr.
"Find any of" is strpbrk.
"Find first not of" is kindof strspn, like this
1
str + strspn(str, " \t\v\f\r\n")
It would skip all whitespace.

"Contains" is just checking
1
strstr(haystack, needle) != NULL


Split is strtok. Not the best api for splitting, but it works. You can implement splitting easily with strspn/strpbrk too.

What the C libraries don't have is a way to reverse search most of the time. Like a way to find the last occurence of X in a str. The reason probably is, that there is no straightforward interface for such a function, since you would have to pass the length of the string into the function.
Mikael Johansson
99 posts / 1 project
Decent string lib for C?
I have made my own string library, something I really recommend you to do.
Sure it takes a little while, but you will have it forever, and you just add the functionality you need for the current project. My string library follows me to every project I do. That way you will have a string library that does EXACTLY what you need it to.
Raytio
56 posts / 1 project
Decent string lib for C?
Same here rolled my own never looked back. All to easy.