Question

I wrote a program in ANSI C to remove the double quote in front and in the end of a string, so "Hello, world" would become Hello, world:

Code:

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

char* removeQuotes(char str[]) {
    int i = 1;
    int len = strlen(str) - 2;
    char * tmp = (char*) malloc (sizeof(char) * len);
    for (;i<=len;++i ) {
        tmp[i-1] = str[i];
    }
    return tmp;
}

int main(void) {
    char str[] = "Hello, world";
    char * abc = removeQuotes(str);
    printf("Inside the quotes is: %s length: %d\n"
            "Original is: %s length: %d", abc, strlen(abc), str, strlen(str));
    return 0;
}

In IDEOne (http://ideone.com/Iybuk) I get the correct answer. But GCC gives me something weird:

U→┬↓ length: 22es is: ello, worlESSOR_↑
Original is: Hello, world length: 12

It happens only when the string contains a space. It works fine with “Helloworld” or something like that.
Any robust method to get it work correctly?

Answer 1

• You have not allocated enough space for the null terminator.

• You don’t add the null terminator to the end of your result.

• Your source string doesn’t actually contain quotes.