Question

How do I do the in-place equivalent of strstr() for a counted string (i.e. not null-terminated) in C?

Answer 1

If you’re afraid of O(m*n) behaviour – basically, you needn’t, such cases don’t occur naturally – here’s a KMP implementation I had lying around which I’ve modified to take the length of the haystack. Also a wrapper. If you want to do repeated searches, write your own and reuse the borders array.

No guarantees for bug-freeness, but it seems to still work.

int *kmp_borders(char *needle, size_t nlen){
    if (!needle) return NULL;
    int i, j, *borders = malloc((nlen+1)*sizeof(*borders));
    if (!borders) return NULL;
    i = 0;
    j = -1;
    borders[i] = j;
    while((size_t)i < nlen){
        while(j >= 0 && needle[i] != needle[j]){
            j = borders[j];
        }
        ++i;
        ++j;
        borders[i] = j;
    }
    return borders;
}

char *kmp_search(char *haystack, size_t haylen, char *needle, size_t nlen, int *borders){
    size_t max_index = haylen-nlen, i = 0, j = 0;
    while(i <= max_index){
        while(j < nlen && *haystack && needle[j] == *haystack){
            ++j;
            ++haystack;
        }
        if (j == nlen){
            return haystack-nlen;
        }
        if (!(*haystack)){
            return NULL;
        }
        if (j == 0){
            ++haystack;
            ++i;
        } else {
            do{
                i += j - (size_t)borders[j];
                j = borders[j];
            }while(j > 0 && needle[j] != *haystack);
        }
    }
    return NULL;
}

char *sstrnstr(char *haystack, char *needle, size_t haylen){
    if (!haystack || !needle){
        return NULL;
    }
    size_t nlen = strlen(needle);
    if (haylen < nlen){
        return NULL;
    }
    int *borders = kmp_borders(needle, nlen);
    if (!borders){
        return NULL;
    }
    char *match = kmp_search(haystack, haylen, needle, nlen, borders);
    free(borders);
    return match;
}