can I split a C string

[KIRAN]

Hi all,
can i split a C string like this?
char * p = "Hello \
World\n\r";
is this according to standard?
Any help or link to standard regarding the above doubt is
aprreciated...
Regards,
Kiran

[pete]

Re: can I split a C string

KIRAN wrote:

Hi all,
can i split a C string like this?
char * p = "Hello \
World\n\r";
is this according to standard?
Any help or link to standard regarding the above doubt is
aprreciated...
Regards,
Kiran

You can use a backslash to split any line in a C program.
1 Be careful that there are no invisible white space
characters between the backslash and the following newline.
2 The conventional way of splitting string literals is simply
to enclose the parts in quotes:

char * p = "Hello "
"World\n\r" ;

The backslash is mostly just used for lengthy macros.

--
pete

[Eric Sosman]

Re: can I split a C string

KIRAN wrote:

Hi all,
can i split a C string like this?
char * p = "Hello \
World\n\r";
is this according to standard?
Any help or link to standard regarding the above doubt is
aprreciated...

Yes, you can do it (assuming the \ immediately precedes the
newline ending the first line). The relevant references in the
Standard are 5.1.1.2p2 (line splicing occurs in translation
phase 2) and 6.4.5p4 (string literals are recognized in phase 6).

In the Bad Old Days this was often the only way to write
very long string literals without using very long source lines.
But the 1989 ANSI Standard codified a better solution: String
literals that are adjacent in the source, with nothing but white
space and comments between them, are concatenated (5.1.1.2p6).
So you could write

char *p = "Hello "
" World\n\r";

or even

char *p = "Hell" /* sorry, bad word */
"o" /* ah, that's better */
/* leave extra spaces, just in case: */ " "
/* and now, the recipient of our greeting: */
"W" /* Gimme a wuh! */
"o" /* Gimme an oh! */
"r" /* Gimme an ahh! */
"l" /* Gimme an ell! */
"d" /* Gimme a dee! */
"\n" /* end of line */ "\r" /* just for luck */
;

with the same effect.

--
Eric.Sosman@sun .com

[badc0de4@gmail.com]

Re: can I split a C string

KIRAN wrote:

can i split a C string like this?
char * p = "Hello \
World\n\r";
is this according to standard?
Any help or link to standard regarding the above doubt is
aprreciated...

I think you can do that.
But you'll have 3 spaces between Hello and World.

Maybe it's better if you do it like this instead:

char * p = "Hello "
"World\r\n" ;

[Keith Thompson]

Re: can I split a C string

KIRAN <kiraank@gmail. comwrites:

can i split a C string like this?
char * p = "Hello \
World\n\r";
is this according to standard?

In addition to the answers you've gotten (yes, you can, but there's a
much better way), why does your string end in "\n\r"? If that's meant
to be a Windows-style line ending, then (a) it's "\r\n", not "\n\r",
and (b) it's rarely necessary to store the "\r" in memory, since "\n"
will be automatically translated as needed when written to a text
stream.

--
Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keit h) kst-u@mib.org <http://www.ghoti.net/~kst>
Nokia
"We must do something. This is something. Therefore, we must do this."
-- Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn, "Yes Minister"

[Peter Nilsson]

Re: can I split a C string

Keith Thompson wrote:

... If that's meant to be a Windows-style line ending,
then (a) it's "\r\n", not "\n\r",

Not necessarily. Old Macs used CR for end of line. Some
implementations allowed you to swap the more typical
values of \r and \n.

--
Peter

[KIRAN]

Re: can I split a C string

On Jul 7, 10:13 pm, Keith Thompson <ks...@mib.orgw rote:

KIRAN <kira...@gmail. comwrites:

can i split a C string like this?
char * p = "Hello \
  World\n\r";
is this according to standard?

>
In addition to the answers you've gotten (yes, you can, but there's a
much better way), why does your string end in "\n\r"?  

Actually I am writing portable code that runs on windows & ARM9 .
my print function will print

1. (WINDOWS)the string on console window(here "\r" is not
required(correc t me if am wrong)

2. (ARM) the string on hyperterminal(U ART)

>If that's meant
to be a Windows-style line ending, then (a) it's "\r\n", not "\n\r",
and

Why?

(b) it's rarely necessary to store the "\r" in memory, since "\n"

will be automatically translated as needed when written to a text
stream.
>
--
Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keit h) ks...@mib.org  <http://www.ghoti.net/~kst>
Nokia
"We must do something.  This is something.  Therefore, we must do this."
    -- Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn, "Yes Minister"

[Keith Thompson]

Re: can I split a C string

KIRAN <kiraank@gmail. comwrites:

On Jul 7, 10:13 pm, Keith Thompson <ks...@mib.orgw rote:

>KIRAN <kira...@gmail. comwrites:

can i split a C string like this?
char * p = "Hello \
  World\n\r";
is this according to standard?

>>
>In addition to the answers you've gotten (yes, you can, but there's a
>much better way), why does your string end in "\n\r"?  

>
Actually I am writing portable code that runs on windows & ARM9 .
my print function will print
>
1. (WINDOWS)the string on console window(here "\r" is not
required(correc t me if am wrong)

It's not required if you're writing to a stream that was opened in
text mode. I'm not sure what will happen if you write the '\r'
anyway. If you write "\n\r", it's likely that you'll get an extra
'\r' at the beginning of each line; this may or may not be harmless.

2. (ARM) the string on hyperterminal(U ART)

I don't know enough about UARTs to know what will happen in that case.

>>If that's meant
>to be a Windows-style line ending, then (a) it's "\r\n", not "\n\r",
>and

>
Why?

I don't know; it's just the way line endings are usually represented
on Windows. I don't know what "\n\r" (LF CR) in a Windows text file
means; for all I know it might be valid. Try a Windows newsgroup if
you want more information.

[...]

--
Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keit h) kst-u@mib.org <http://www.ghoti.net/~kst>
Nokia
"We must do something. This is something. Therefore, we must do this."
-- Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn, "Yes Minister"

[Richard Heathfield]

Re: can I split a C string

KIRAN said:

On Jul 7, 10:13 pm, Keith Thompson <ks...@mib.orgw rote:

>KIRAN <kira...@gmail. comwrites:

can i split a C string like this?
char * p = "Hello \
World\n\r";
is this according to standard?

>>
>In addition to the answers you've gotten (yes, you can, but there's a
>much better way), why does your string end in "\n\r"?

>
Actually I am writing portable code that runs on windows & ARM9 .
my print function will print
>
1. (WINDOWS)the string on console window(here "\r" is not
required(correc t me if am wrong)
>
2. (ARM) the string on hyperterminal(U ART)
>

>>If that's meant
>to be a Windows-style line ending, then (a) it's "\r\n", not "\n\r",
>and

>
Why?

Because there was a teletype device in the 1960s on which moving the
carriage (the thing that carried the print head) from the right edge of
the paper to the left edge took twice as long as it took for a character
to arrive over the wire. To avoid dropping characters during the return of
the carriage from right to left, the designers split the task into two -
returning the carriage to the left edge of the paper, and feeding the
paper up a line - so that it would require two input characters to do this
one task, and thus the carriage would have time to do its thing without
any characters being dropped. (Essentially, the linefeed started life as a
padding character.)

CP/M uncritically adopted the CR/LF convention, wasting one byte per line
of text file. Recognising this, the Unix guys dropped the CR, whereas the
Mac folks dropped the LF. 86-DOS (QDOS) inherited the pair from CP/M, and
then was rebadged as MS-DOS, which was later rebadged as Windows. So even
in 2008, Windows users are stuck with this two-character newline encoding
several decades after the obsolescence of the hardware whose shortcomings
it was introduced to work around.

--
Richard Heathfield <http://www.cpax.org.uk >
Email: -http://www. +rjh@
Google users: <http://www.cpax.org.uk/prg/writings/googly.php>
"Usenet is a strange place" - dmr 29 July 1999

[vippstar@gmail.com]

Re: can I split a C string

On Jul 7, 6:24 pm, KIRAN <kira...@gmail. comwrote:

Hi all,
can i split a C string like this?
char * p = "Hello \
World\n\r";
is this according to standard?

Your current code is not valid. There's a space after \.

[Bartc]

Re: can I split a C string

"Richard Heathfield" <rjh@see.sig.in validwrote in message
news:NPydncrGj7 D_v-7VRVnyugA@bt.co m...

KIRAN said:
>

>On Jul 7, 10:13 pm, Keith Thompson <ks...@mib.orgw rote:

>>KIRAN <kira...@gmail. comwrites:
>can i split a C string like this?
>char * p = "Hello \
>World\n\r";
>is this according to standard?
>>>
>>In addition to the answers you've gotten (yes, you can, but there's a
>>much better way), why does your string end in "\n\r"?

>>
>Actually I am writing portable code that runs on windows & ARM9 .
>my print function will print
>>
>1. (WINDOWS)the string on console window(here "\r" is not
>required(corre ct me if am wrong)
>>
>2. (ARM) the string on hyperterminal(U ART)
>>

>>>If that's meant
>>to be a Windows-style line ending, then (a) it's "\r\n", not "\n\r",
>>and

>>
>Why?

>
Because there was a teletype device in the 1960s on which moving the
carriage (the thing that carried the print head) from the right edge of
the paper to the left edge took twice as long as it took for a character
to arrive over the wire. To avoid dropping characters during the return of
the carriage from right to left, the designers split the task into two -
returning the carriage to the left edge of the paper, and feeding the
paper up a line - so that it would require two input characters to do this
one task, and thus the carriage would have time to do its thing without
any characters being dropped. (Essentially, the linefeed started life as a
padding character.)

If you're talking about the ASR33, this I think /required/ the two
characters, CR to move the head to the left, and LF to advance a line. They
were two different operations.

For convenience, whenever the user pressed Return, it was echoed back as CR
LF.

>
CP/M uncritically adopted the CR/LF convention, wasting one byte per line
of text file. Recognising this, the Unix guys dropped the CR, whereas the
Mac folks dropped the LF. 86-DOS (QDOS) inherited the pair from CP/M, and
then was rebadged as MS-DOS, which was later rebadged as Windows. So even
in 2008, Windows users are stuck with this two-character newline encoding
several decades after the obsolescence of the hardware whose shortcomings
it was introduced to work around.

I think Windows itself didn't help by requiring both CR and LF to be present
when sending text to the console, just like the teletype, otherwise lines
would either overwrite themselves (LF missing), or newlines would start
halfway across the screen (CR missing). So it was advisable to keep the CRLF
ending in a text file.

>On Jul 7, 10:13 pm, Keith Thompson <ks...@mib.orgw rote:

>>>If that's meant
>>to be a Windows-style line ending, then (a) it's "\r\n", not "\n\r",

In text mode these will result in CR CR LF or CR LF CR, even more waste. And
if sent to a file, a lot of confusion for programs that expect specific line
endings.

--
Bartc

[Richard Heathfield]

Re: can I split a C string

Bartc said:

"Richard Heathfield" <rjh@see.sig.in validwrote in message
news:NPydncrGj7 D_v-7VRVnyugA@bt.co m...

<snip>

>To avoid dropping characters during the return
>of the carriage from right to left, the designers split the task into
>two - returning the carriage to the left edge of the paper, and feeding
>the paper up a line - so that it would require two input characters to
>do this one task, and thus the carriage would have time to do its thing
>without any characters being dropped. (Essentially, the linefeed started
>life as a padding character.)

>
If you're talking about the ASR33, this I think /required/ the two
characters, CR to move the head to the left, and LF to advance a line.
They were two different operations.

Yes, that's a reasonable re-phrasing of part of what I said.

<snip>


--
Richard Heathfield <http://www.cpax.org.uk >
Email: -http://www. +rjh@
Google users: <http://www.cpax.org.uk/prg/writings/googly.php>
"Usenet is a strange place" - dmr 29 July 1999

[Coos Haak]

Re: can I split a C string

Op Tue, 8 Jul 2008 02:20:18 -0700 (PDT) schreef vippstar@gmail. com:

On Jul 7, 6:24 pm, KIRAN <kira...@gmail. comwrote:

>Hi all,
>can i split a C string like this?
>char * p = "Hello \
> World\n\r";
>is this according to standard?

Your current code is not valid. There's a space after \.

Only when you use (of view it with) google groups ;-)
--
Coos

[Richard Heathfield]

Re: can I split a C string

Coos Haak said:

Op Tue, 8 Jul 2008 02:20:18 -0700 (PDT) schreef vippstar@gmail. com:
>

>On Jul 7, 6:24 pm, KIRAN <kira...@gmail. comwrote:

>>Hi all,
>>can i split a C string like this?
>>char * p = "Hello \
>> World\n\r";
>>is this according to standard?

>Your current code is not valid. There's a space after \.

>
Only when you use (of view it with) google groups ;-)

No, the article source has the space there.

--
Richard Heathfield <http://www.cpax.org.uk >
Email: -http://www. +rjh@
Google users: <http://www.cpax.org.uk/prg/writings/googly.php>
"Usenet is a strange place" - dmr 29 July 1999

[Coos Haak]

Re: can I split a C string

Op Tue, 08 Jul 2008 17:48:16 +0000 schreef Richard Heathfield:

Coos Haak said:
>

>Op Tue, 8 Jul 2008 02:20:18 -0700 (PDT) schreef vippstar@gmail. com:
>>

>>On Jul 7, 6:24 pm, KIRAN <kira...@gmail. comwrote:
>>>Hi all,
>>>can i split a C string like this?
>>>char * p = "Hello \
>>> World\n\r";
>>>is this according to standard?
>>Your current code is not valid. There's a space after \.

>>
>Only when you use (of view it with) google groups ;-)

>
No, the article source has the space there.

Not when I see it in my news reader. The space I saw was in the posting in
google groups. I assumed from his account @gmail.com that the OP posted
there.

--
Coos