clearing a char array c

Question

I thought by setting the first element to a null would clear the entire contents of a char array.

char my_custom_data[40] = "Hello!";
my_custom_data[0] = '\0';

However, this only sets the first element to null.

or

my_custom_data[0] = 0; 

rather than use memset, I thought the 2 examples above should clear all the data.

Answer 1

How about the following:

bzero(my_custom_data,40);

Answer 2

It depends on how you want to view the array. If you are viewing the array as a series of chars, then the only way to clear out the data is to touch every entry. memset is probably the most effective way to achieve this.

On the other hand, if you are choosing to view this as a C/C++ null terminated string, setting the first byte to 0 will effectively clear the string.

Answer 3

Try the following code:

void clean(char *var) {
    int i = 0;
    while(var[i] != '\0') {
        var[i] = '\0';
        i++;
    }
}

Answer 4

Writing a null character to the first character does just that. If you treat it as a string, code obeying the null termination character will treat it as a null string, but that is not the same as clearing the data. If you want to actually clear the data you'll need to use memset.

Answer 5

set the first element to NULL. printing the char array will give you nothing back.

Answer 6

Try the following:

strcpy(my_custom_data,"");