Declaring Pascal-style strings in C

Question

In C, is there a good way to define length first, Pascal-style strings as constants, so they can be placed in ROM? (I\'m working with a small embedded system with a non-GCC

Answer 1

My approach would be to create functions for dealing with Pascal strings:

void cstr2pstr(const char *cstr, char *pstr) {
    int i;
    for (i = 0; cstr[i]; i++) {
        pstr[i+1] = cstr[i];
    }
    pstr[0] = i;
}

void pstr2cstr(const char *pstr, char *cstr) {
    int i;
    for (i = 0; i < pstr[0]; i++) {
        cstr[i] = pstr[i+1];
    }
    cstr[i] = 0;
}

Then I could use it this way:

int main(int arg, char *argv[]) {
    char cstr[] = "ABCD", pstr[5], back[5];
    cstr2pstr(cstr, pstr);
    pstr2cstr(pstr, back);
    printf("%s\n", back);
    return 0;
}

This seems to be simple, straightforward, less error prone and not specially awkward. It may be not the solution to your problem, but I would recommend you to at least think about using it.