Strip first and last character from C string

Question

I have a C string that looks like \"Nmy stringP\", where N and P can be any character. How can I edit it into \"my string\" in C?

Answer 1

The most efficient way:

//Note destroys the original string by removing it's last char
// Do not pass in a string literal.
char * getAllButFirstAndLast(char *input)
{
  int len = strlen(input); 
  if(len > 0)
    input++;//Go past the first char
  if(len > 1)
    input[len - 2] = '\0';//Replace the last char with a null termination
  return input;
}


//...
//Call it like so
char str[512];
strcpy(str, "hello world");
char *pMod = getAllButFirstAndLast(str);

The safest way:

void getAllButFirstAndLast(const char *input, char *output)
{
  int len = strlen(input);
  if(len > 0)
    strcpy(output, ++input);
  if(len > 1)
    output[len - 2] = '\0';
}


//...
//Call it like so
char mod[512];
getAllButFirstAndLast("hello world", mod);

The second way is less efficient but it is safer because you can pass in string literals into input. You could also use strdup for the second way if you didn't want to implement it yourself.