Learn to Program with C_ Learn to Program using the Popular C Programming Language ( PDFDrive )

Chapter 8 ■ Arrays
If n is not a value from 1 to 7, the function stores Invalid day in name. If it is a valid day
number, it stores the value of day[n] in name. For example, if n is 6, the function stores day[6],
that is, Friday, in name.
In main, dayName is declared to be of size 12 since it needs to hold the string "Invalid day" if
the day number is invalid.
8.11 A Flexible getString Function
So far, we have used the format specification %s to read a string containing no whitespace
characters and the function gets to read a string up to the end-of-line. However, neither of these
allows us to read a string delimited by double quotes, for instance. Suppose we had data as in the
following format:
"Margaret Dwarika" "Clerical Assistant"
We would not be able to use %s or gets to read this data easily.
We will write a function, getString, which lets us read a string enclosed within ‘delimiter’
characters. For example, we could specify a string as $John Smith$ or "John Smith." This is a very
flexible way of specifying a string. Each string can be specified with its own delimiters which could
be different for the next string. It is particularly useful for specifying strings which may include
special characters such as the double quotes without having to use an escape sequence like\".
For instance, in order to specify the following string in C:
"Don't move!" he commanded.
we must write:
"\"Don't move!\" he commanded."
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With getString, this string could be supplied as
$"Don't move!" he commanded.$
or
%"Don't move!" he commanded.%
or using any other character as a delimiter, provided it is not one of the characters in the string.
We could even use something like this:
7"Don't move!" he commanded."7
but would normally use special characters like ", $, % or # as delimiters.
We will write getString with two parameters: a file designated by in and a character
array str. The function will read the next string from in and store it in str.
The function assumes that the first non-whitespace character met (delim, say) is the
delimiter. Characters are read and stored until delim is met again, indicating the end of the string.
The delimiter characters are not stored since they are not part of the string.
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