How do you reverse a string in place in C or C++?

Question

How do you reverse a string in C or C++ without requiring a separate buffer to hold the reversed string?

Answer 1

Recursive function to reverse a string in place (no extra buffer, malloc).

Short, sexy code. Bad, bad stack usage.

#include 

/* Store the each value and move to next char going down
 * the stack. Assign value to start ptr and increment 
 * when coming back up the stack (return).
 * Neat code, horrible stack usage.
 *
 * val - value of current pointer.
 * s - start pointer
 * n - next char pointer in string.
 */
char *reverse_r(char val, char *s, char *n)
{
    if (*n)
        s = reverse_r(*n, s, n+1);
   *s = val;
   return s+1;
}

/*
 * expect the string to be passed as argv[1]
 */
int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
    char *aString;

    if (argc < 2)
    {
        printf("Usage: RSIP \n");
        return 0;
    }

    aString = argv[1];
    printf("String to reverse: %s\n", aString );

    reverse_r(*aString, aString, aString+1); 
    printf("Reversed String:   %s\n", aString );

    return 0;
}