Question

Suppose I have something like this

int strLen;

printf("Please enter a number: ");
scanf("%d", &strLen);

char *myString;

myString = (char*) malloc(strLen*sizeof(char));

then you fill string with something like “Hello World!” but now I want to just print out “World!” Since my string is just a pointer reference, I can’t call it out by indexes ie.

for(int i=6;i<strLen;i++)
{
    printf("%s", myString[i]);
}
// THIS IS AN INCORRECT WAY TO DO THIS

How could I refer to a specific character or even pass the array onto another function of the program if all I have is the array base pointer? Can I ever get the full functionality as if I declared it as a static array before compile time?

Answer 1

A couple of things:

1) Allow for the null terminator in your “malloc()”:

int strLen;
...
char *myString = (char*) malloc(strLen+1);

2) The “sizeof(char)” is kind of duplicate redundant. No harm – but no purpose, either. So I omitted it.

3) This is wrong:

for(int i=6;i<strLen;i++)
{
  printf("%s", myString[i]);
}

4) This is better:

for(int i=6;i<strLen;i++)
{
  printf("%c", myString[i]);
}