strlen

 

C

Language

Standard Library

Type support

Dynamic memory management

Error handling

Program utilities

Date and time utilities

Strings library

Algorithms

Numerics

Input/output support

Localization support

Thread support (C11)

Atomic operations (C11)

 

Strings library

Byte strings

Multibyte strings

Wide strings

 

Null-terminated byte strings

Functions
Character manipulation
isalnum isalpha islower isupper isdigit isxdigit isblank (C99)	iscntrl isgraph isspace isprint ispunct tolower toupper
Conversions to numeric formats
atof atoiatolatoll strtolstrtoll	strtoulstrtoull strtofstrtodstrtold
String manipulation
strcpy
strncpy
strcat
strncat
strxfrm
String examination
strlen strcmp strncmp strcoll strchr strrchr	strspn strcspn strpbrk strstr strtok
Memory manipulation
memchr
memcmp
memset
memcpy
memmove
Miscellaneous
strerror

 

Defined in header <string.h>
size_t strlen( const char *str );

Returns the length of the given byte string.

The null character is excluded from the length.

Parameters

str

-

pointer to the null-terminated byte string to be examined

Return value

The length of the null-terminated string str.

Example

Run this code

#include <string.h>
#include <stdio.h>
 
int main(void)
{
    const char str[] = "How many characters does this string contain?";
 
    printf("without null character: %zu\n", strlen(str));
    printf("with null character: %zu\n", sizeof(str));
 
    return 0;
}

Output:

without null character: 45
with null character: 46

See also

C++ documentation for strlen