left( source, count ) in C

[Henry Spencer]

In article <510007 at hpmcaa.mcm.hp.com> nacer at hpmcaa.mcm.hp.com (Abdenacer Moussaoui) writes:
>How do you write a function that returns the left part of a string in C?

>From context, it sounds like you don't want to allocate new storage, just
treat the left part of the old string as if it were a string.  And you
specify that the old string not be modified.  Sorry, you can't do this
in C.  A C string is a sequence of characters terminated by a NUL ('\0').
To make the left part into a string, you have to get that NUL in there
somehow, either by modifying the old string or by allocating new
storage (e.g. with malloc()) and building a copy there.
-- 
MSDOS, abbrev:  Maybe SomeDay |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
an Operating System.          | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry at zoo.toronto.edu