How can I get a string from a 2d character array in C?

Question

The 2d array:

char c[4][3]={{'a','b','c'},{'d','e','f'},{'g','h','i'},{'j','k','l'}};

As I wanted to get 'def' after running the program, I tried this code:

printf("%s\n",c[1]);

However, the result was 'defghijkl\262'. What's wrong with my code?

%s means a string. You have no null terminator so it runs away on you. A 2D array of characters is not a string. Read about `printf`. Learn C. — TomServo, Feb 04 '20 at 03:01

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 04 '20 at 03:11

You can print def in two ways:

char c[4][4]={{'a','b','c','\0'},{'d','e','f','\0'},{'g','h','i','\0'},{'j','k','l','\0'}};        
printf("%s\n",c[1]);

So, basically printf needs null termination to know where to stop printing

or you can print using a loop without null termination like:

char c[4][3]={{'a','b','c'},{'d','e','f'},{'g','h','i'},{'j','k','l'}};
for(int i = 0; i < 3; i++)
{
   printf("%c", c[1][i]);
}

1 Answers1