Is there a way to point to a certain section of a string in C?-CodePudding

I would like to point to a certain part of a character array, i.e:

char string[] = "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog";
char * pointer = points to the 'fox' part of string;

Is this possible to do without using strncpy or something similar?

CodePudding user response：

Without copying or modifying the string, you can only point to substrings with the same end (e.g., fox jumps over the lazy dog, dog, or lazy dog), not ones that end in the middle of the original string like fox or lazy.

CodePudding user response：

strstr() or similar user code can be used to find a sub-string within a string.

const char *haystack = "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog";
const char *target = "fox";

char *needle = strstr(haystack, target);

To print a portion of the string like "fox", use a precision.

if (needle == NULL) {
  printf("<%s> not found.\n");
} else {
  size_t offset = needle - haystack;
  int precision = (int) strlen(target);
  printf("<%.*s> found at offset %zu.\n", precision, needle, offset);
}