Question

I want to create a “fullname” variable from multiple strings. Something like this:

strcpy (fullname, firstname);
strcat (fullname, separator); // separator is initialized at " "
strcat (fullname, middlename);
strcat (fullname, separator);
strcat (fullname, lastname);

This code is repeated at multiple places in my project. I was gonna do a function that does exactly that, but now I wonder if there isn’t a better way to do it.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

You can do also:

sprintf (fullname, "%s%s%s%s%s", firstname, separator, middlename, separator, lastname);

But always make sure that the fullname points to a buffer which can accommodate the total length of all the things you are concatenating.

int size;
int *fullname;
size = strlen (firstname) + strlen (separator) + strlen (middlename) + strlen (separator) + strlen (lastname) + 1;

fullname = malloc (sizeof (char) * size);

sprintf (fullname, "%s%s%s%s%s", firstname, separator, middlename, separator, lastname);

/* Work */

free (fullname);