Better String

A C library that provides a better string that resizes its size automatically.

Getting started

Simply download better_string.h and put it in your source code. The project is licensed under the MIT license.

Or, to quickly test it out, we have a simple test program:

gcc test.c
./a.out

Basic usage

Make sure you have included the downloaded header!

To create a new string:

string* my_str = str_init();
if (my_str == NULL) puts("alloc failed");
str_add(my_str, "Hello World!");

You will often need to turn a string into a C string. For this case, you can use the c_str() function:

puts(c_str(my_str));

A string is simply a struct with an integer holding its size and a C string with the raw data.

After you are finished working with your string, you MUST use the str_free() function to free allocated memory:

str_free(my_str);

This automatically frees my_str->data and my_str.

Other functions

str_addc()

This is what str_add uses under the hood. This function simply resizes your string with realloc, moves the null terminator and puts the character before the null terminator.

str_addc(my_string, 'h');

c_str_to_str()

Turns a C string into a string. (why are we calling these "the" strings, again?)

const char *path = getenv("PATH");
string* new_string = c_str_to_str(path);

char_to_str()

Turns a character into a string.

char ch = (char)getchar();
string* str_from_char = char_to_str(ch);

str_len()

Just runs strlen() from <string.h> on string->data.