What is the function to replace string in C?

Question

Given a (char *) string, I want to find all occurrence of a substring and replace it with an alternate string. I do not see any simple function that achieves this in <string.h>

Answer 1

The optimizer should eliminate most of the local variables. The tmp pointer is there to make sure strcpy doesn't have to walk the string to find the null. tmp points to the end of result after each call. (See Shlemiel the painter's algorithm for why strcpy can be annoying.)

// You must free the result if result is non-NULL.
char *str_replace(char *orig, char *rep, char *with) {
    char *result; // the return string
    char *ins;    // the next insert point
    char *tmp;    // varies
    int len_rep;  // length of rep (the string to remove)
    int len_with; // length of with (the string to replace rep with)
    int len_front; // distance between rep and end of last rep
    int count;    // number of replacements

    // sanity checks and initialization
    if (!orig || !rep)
        return NULL;
    len_rep = strlen(rep);
    if (len_rep == 0)
        return NULL; // empty rep causes infinite loop during count
    if (!with)
        with = "";
    len_with = strlen(with);

    // count the number of replacements needed
    ins = orig;
    for (count = 0; tmp = strstr(ins, rep); ++count) {
        ins = tmp + len_rep;
    }

    tmp = result = malloc(strlen(orig) + (len_with - len_rep) * count + 1);

    if (!result)
        return NULL;

    // first time through the loop, all the variable are set correctly
    // from here on,
    //    tmp points to the end of the result string
    //    ins points to the next occurrence of rep in orig
    //    orig points to the remainder of orig after "end of rep"
    while (count--) {
        ins = strstr(orig, rep);
        len_front = ins - orig;
        tmp = strncpy(tmp, orig, len_front) + len_front;
        tmp = strcpy(tmp, with) + len_with;
        orig += len_front + len_rep; // move to next "end of rep"
    }
    strcpy(tmp, orig);
    return result;
}

Answer 2

The repl_str() function on creativeandcritical.net is fast and reliable. Also included on that page is a wide string variant, repl_wcs(), which can be used with Unicode strings including those encoded in UTF-8, through helper functions - demo code is linked from the page. Belated full disclosure: I am the author of that page and the functions on it.

Answer 3

There isn't one.

You'd need to roll your own using something like strstr and strcat or strcpy.

Answer 4

i find most of the proposed functions hard to understand - so i came up with this:

static char *dull_replace(const char *in, const char *pattern, const char *by)
{
    size_t outsize = strlen(in) + 1;
    // TODO maybe avoid reallocing by counting the non-overlapping occurences of pattern
    char *res = malloc(outsize);
    // use this to iterate over the output
    size_t resoffset = 0;

    char *needle;
    while (needle = strstr(in, pattern)) {
        // copy everything up to the pattern
        memcpy(res + resoffset, in, needle - in);
        resoffset += needle - in;

        // skip the pattern in the input-string
        in = needle + strlen(pattern);

        // adjust space for replacement
        outsize = outsize - strlen(pattern) + strlen(by);
        res = realloc(res, outsize);

        // copy the pattern
        memcpy(res + resoffset, by, strlen(by));
        resoffset += strlen(by);
    }

    // copy the remaining input
    strcpy(res + resoffset, in);

    return res;
}

output must be free'd

Answer 5

There you go....this is the function to replace every occurance of char x with char y within character string str

char *zStrrep(char *str, char x, char y){
    char *tmp=str;
    while(*tmp)
        if(*tmp == x)
            *tmp++ = y; /* assign first, then incement */
        else
            *tmp++;

    *tmp='\0';
    return str;
}

An example usage could be

  Exmaple Usage
        char s[]="this is a trial string to test the function.";
        char x=' ', y='_';
        printf("%s\n",zStrrep(s,x,y));

  Example Output
        this_is_a_trial_string_to_test_the_function.

The function is from a string library I maintain on Github, you are more than welcome to have a look at other available functions or even contribute to the code :)

https://github.com/fnoyanisi/zString

EDIT: @siride is right, the function above replaces chars only. Just wrote this one, which replaces character strings.

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

/* replace every occurance of string x with string y */
char *zstring_replace_str(char *str, const char *x, const char *y){
    char *tmp_str = str, *tmp_x = x, *dummy_ptr = tmp_x, *tmp_y = y;
    int len_str=0, len_y=0, len_x=0;

    /* string length */
    for(; *tmp_y; ++len_y, ++tmp_y)
        ;

    for(; *tmp_str; ++len_str, ++tmp_str)
        ;

    for(; *tmp_x; ++len_x, ++tmp_x)
        ;

    /* Bounds check */
    if (len_y >= len_str)
        return str;

    /* reset tmp pointers */
    tmp_y = y;
    tmp_x = x;

    for (tmp_str = str ; *tmp_str; ++tmp_str)
        if(*tmp_str == *tmp_x) {
            /* save tmp_str */
            for (dummy_ptr=tmp_str; *dummy_ptr == *tmp_x; ++tmp_x, ++dummy_ptr)
                if (*(tmp_x+1) == '\0' && ((dummy_ptr-str+len_y) < len_str)){
                /* Reached end of x, we got something to replace then!
                * Copy y only if there is enough room for it
                */
                    for(tmp_y=y; *tmp_y; ++tmp_y, ++tmp_str)
                        *tmp_str = *tmp_y;
            }
        /* reset tmp_x */
        tmp_x = x;
        }

    return str;
}

int main()
{
    char s[]="Free software is a matter of liberty, not price.\n"
             "To understand the concept, you should think of 'free' \n"
             "as in 'free speech', not as in 'free beer'";

    printf("%s\n\n",s);
    printf("%s\n",zstring_replace_str(s,"ree","XYZ"));
    return 0;
}

And below is the output

Free software is a matter of liberty, not price.
To understand the concept, you should think of 'free' 
as in 'free speech', not as in 'free beer'

FXYZ software is a matter of liberty, not price.
To understand the concept, you should think of 'fXYZ' 
as in 'fXYZ speech', not as in 'fXYZ beer'

Answer 6

You could build your own replace function using strstr to find the substrings and strncpy to copy in parts to a new buffer.

Unless what you want to replace_with is the same length as what you you want to replace, then it's probably best to use a new buffer to copy the new string to.