Escaping a char * in C

Question

I had to made something for a little programm some days ago, I needed to turn a string like "foo\n" into its stringified form (something like "\"foo\\n\"").

But I found nothing, so I ended up writing my own function (and it worked fine). But I'm still wondering : Is there a function to stringify strings like this?

I know the python equivalent "%r" % strtostringify, and I know that I can strinfifying pieces of code at compiling with preprocessor directives :

#define TOSTRING(X) #X
#define STRINGIFY(X) TOSTRING(X)

but is there a way to make it dynamically in C?

The process you're describing is normally called "escaping" , and there's no built-in escaping function in C (nor in the preprocessor). "stringify" means to change `X` into `"X"`, where `X` is a pre-processing token (not an arbitrary sequence of bytes) — M.M, May 10 '17 at 20:39
@M.M Actually, the `gcc` documentation's refers to the `#` use in preprocessor directives as "stringizing" (perhaps both words are used?), but thank you for making it clear that there is no such thing in C standard library. :) https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/cpp/Stringizing.html#Stringizing — vmonteco, May 10 '17 at 20:47
yes, the `#` operator is for stringizing as I described in my comment (not escaping) — M.M, May 10 '17 at 21:23

score 4 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 11:47

4

Escaping special characters is not provided in any standard c function.

For GPL, you can take a look in standard c library for escaping a string.

edited May 23 '17 at 11:47

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answered May 10 '17 at 20:40

gsamaras

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That's all I needed to know. :) Thank you for this answer and for the link. – vmonteco May 10 '17 at 20:48

Escaping a char * in C

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