C - Own str_join function does not work

Question

I wanted to make a simple str_join function in C (to learn a bit more about pointers and arrays), which literally joins two string together.

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

int str_size(char *str);
void str_join(char *str1, char *str2);

int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
    char *part1 = "Hello ";
    char *part2 = "World!";
    str_join(part1, part2);
    printf("%s\n", part1);
    return 0;
}

int str_size(char *str)
{
    char c;
    for(int i = 0;; i++)
    {
        c = str[i];
        if(c == '\0')
            return i + 1;
    }
}

void str_join(char *str1, char *str2)
{
    int str_size_1 = str_size(str1) - 1; //Last char is '\0', don't need them 2 times
    int str_size_2 = str_size(str2);
    char str3[str_size_1 + str_size_2];
    int i;

    for(i = 0; i < str_size_1; i++)
        str3[i] = str1[i];

    for(i = 0; i < str_size_2; i++)
        str3[i + str_size_1] = str2[i];

    str1 = (char *)str3;
}

It looks simple (maybe too simple). I excepted the output to be:

Hello World

but it looks like:

Hello 

I compiled the program using following command:

gcc main.c -o main

And ran it:

./main

I don't see my failure, could someone point me to my error? Thank you for helping me out!

Answer 1

In C, function arguments are passed by value. Any changes made to any parameter from inside the function is will not reflect to the caller (actual argument).

So, in your case, str1 = (char *)str3;, does not do what you think it does.

That said, wait, stop!! str3 is a VLA and lifetime is the block scope. You cannot possibly return the address of the first element and expect that to be valid outside the scope for accessing the memory location(s). You need to allocate memory in such a way that it outlives its scope., You have to either

• use an array with static storage (cannot be combined with VLAs)
• use memory allocator function

Answer 2

You are not returning the pointer you think you are returning from the function.

str1 = (char *)str3;

You seem to assume that this changes str1 so that it points to the (correctly) joined string str3, but this change is not visible outside of the function.

You can fix this in (at least) two ways:

1) Allocate with malloc

char *str3 = malloc(str_size_1 + str_size_2);

And then return this pointer from the function (instead of void)

or 2)

pass a pointer to the pointer to the function, like this

void str_join(char **str1, char *str2)

And then

*str1 = str3;

Answer 3

I'm sure that there are many ways of implementing what is required here. A reasonably idiomatic way in C would be to create a new dynamically-allocated string large enough to hold both the original strings, and return that to the caller.

#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <malloc.h>

char *str_join(char *str1, char *str2)
  {
  char *result = malloc (strlen (str1) + strlen (str2) + 1);
  strcpy (result, str1);
  strcat (result, str2);
  return result;
  }

 int main(int argc, char **argv)
   {
   char *part1 = "Hello ";
   char *part2 = "World!";
   char *joined = str_join(part1, part2);
   printf("%s\n", joined);
   free (joined);
   return 0;
   }

The caller will have to call free() on the result. It's reasonable common practice to assume that any function that returns a "char *" is returning something that has to be freed, whilst a function that returns a "const char *" is returning something that doesn't need to be freed. A number of basic, long-standing functions in the C standard library don't follow this convention, however.

Answer 4

The objective you wish to achieve is done with the help of call by reference method of the function calling method. But in your code, the str_join is a call by value function. When you change the value of str1 it is changed just for the scope of the function. As, soon as you come out of the str_join scope the value of str1 is again changed to the earlier one, becuase what you are passing to the function is not the address of str1 but a copy of the value of str1. You should try this instead :

void str_join(char **str1, char **str2) 

// though the str2 need not to be passed by reference you can leave it as it is now

Replace the str1 inside the function with *str1

Then you can call it in your main function as : str_join(&str1, &str2)

The & sign signifies that you are passing the address of str1 and str2