Is it possible to modify a string of char in C?

Question

I have been struggling for a few hours with all sorts of C tutorials and books related to pointers but what I really want to know is if it\'s possible to change a char point

Answer 1

You need to copy the string into another, not read-only memory buffer and modify it there. Use strncpy() for copying the string, strlen() for detecting string length, malloc() and free() for dynamically allocating a buffer for the new string.

For example (C++ like pseudocode):

int stringLength = strlen( sourceString );
char* newBuffer = malloc( stringLength + 1 );

// you should check if newBuffer is 0 here to test for memory allocaton failure - omitted

strncpy( newBuffer, sourceString, stringLength );
newBuffer[stringLength] = 0;

// you can now modify the contents of newBuffer freely

free( newBuffer );
newBuffer = 0;