- One character surrounded by single quotes

- Examples: 'A' or '?'

- Special characters and no-graphic characters

* Denoted by preceding other characters with a (backslash)

* Examples: \n (newline), \t (horizontal tab), \v (vertical tab), \b (backspace) etc.

- Sequence of characters surrounded by double quotes

- Examples: "George", "ABC", "ABC0DF" (you have already used them in cout !!)

- They are stored as a char array !!

- A null character ('\0') is also added at the end of the array

- Important: String constant "A" is different from character constant 'A'

- Declare a character array

- Store the characters of the string into the array

- Remember to append '\0' at the end of the array

char name[7]; // room for 6 characters plus '\0'

name[0]='G'; name[1]='e';
name[2]='o'; name[3]='r';
name[4]='g'; name[5]='e';
name[6]='\0';

- Important: C++ assumes that all strings are null-terminated !!

- Why is '\0' important ? It specifies the end of the string !!

char name[10]; // room for 9 characters plus '\0'

char name[7]; // room for 6 characters plus '\0'

name[0]='G'; name[1]='e';
name[2]='o'; name[3]='r';
name[4]='g'; name[5]='e';
name[6]='\0';             // i.e., the last character is stored at the 6th place
                                  // the other 3 places remain unutilized
                                  // thus, strings can be of variable length

int StrLength(const char str[])
{
 int i = 0;
 
 while(str[i] != '\0')
   ++i;

 return i;
}

- Examples: cout << StrLength(name); or cout << StrLength("George"); (answer will be 6)

- Create and initialize strings

- Input a string

- Output a string

- Determine the length of a string

- Compare two strings

- Copy one string to another

- One way: char name[7] = {'G', 'e', 'o', 'r', 'g', 'e', '\0' };

- Another way: char name[7] = "George"; or char name[] = "George"; (no '\0' !! Why ??)

- Aggregate assignment is not legal !!

char name[]="George"; // this is legal
          ...
name="John"; // this is illegal !!

- Warning: what if the character array is not large enough ?
* characters will be stored into memory locations past the end of the array

- Warning: what if the string contains blank characters ??
* cin skips all whitespace (blanks, newlines, etc.) characters !!!

* Use the cin.get() function instead !!

- Application: reading input file names during execution !!

- C++ offers a large number of functions for manipulating strings