Comparing dynamically allocated strings in C

I’m working on a case where I’m dynamically populating a char array based on the return value of another function.

At some point, I would like to compare the incoming value to a static string and trigger an action.

For some reason, I couldn’t get the strcmp function to work. Please see the code below and the respective output.

CODE:

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

char* word_generator(int selector)
{
    switch(selector)
        {
            case 0:
                return "a";
                break;
            case 1:
                return "jk";
                break;
            case 2:
                return "dfr";
                break;
            case 3:
                return "sbjk";
                break;
            default:
                printf("ERROR: Request out of range!\n");
    }
    return "";
}


int main () {
    for(int i = 0; i < 4; i++)
    {
        printf("Test string[%d]: %s\n", i, word_generator(i));
        printf("\t__STRLEN: %lu\n", strlen(word_generator(i)));

        char* input_char_buffer = malloc(strlen(word_generator(i))+1);
        strcpy(input_char_buffer, word_generator(i));
    
        printf("\tCurrent buffer (value: %s, length: %zu)\n", input_char_buffer, strlen(input_char_buffer));

        char key[] = "dfr";
        printf("\tCurrent key (value: %s, length: %zu)\n", key, strlen(key));

        /* if(strlen(input_char_buffer) == strlen(key)) */
        /* { */
        /*     printf("\t\tOK\n"); */
        /* } */

        int ret;
        ret = strcmp(input_char_buffer, key);
        printf("\t__STRCMP: %d\n", ret);

        if(ret == 1)
        {
            printf("\t\tOK\n");
        }

        // Clean-up.
        free(input_char_buffer);
        input_char_buffer = NULL;
    }

    return 0;
}

OUTPUT:

Test string[0]: a
    __STRLEN: 1
    Current buffer (value: a, length: 1)
    Current key (value: dfr, length: 3)
    __STRCMP: -3
Test string[1]: jk
    __STRLEN: 2
    Current buffer (value: jk, length: 2)
    Current key (value: dfr, length: 3)
    __STRCMP: 6
Test string[2]: dfr
    __STRLEN: 3
    Current buffer (value: dfr, length: 3)
    Current key (value: dfr, length: 3)
    __STRCMP: 0
Test string[3]: sbjk
    __STRLEN: 4
    Current buffer (value: sbjk, length: 4)
    Current key (value: dfr, length: 3)
    __STRCMP: 15

As you can see, the debug bits are the correct values, but for some reason the strcmp is returning garbage values.

>Solution :

Don’t worry, these numbers are not trash, it’s just how strcmp works.

strcmp returns 0 whenever both strings match, if they don’t, it returns the difference between the first char of both strings in the ASCII table.

For instance:

The value of d from dfr is 100 in the ASCII table, while s from sbjk is 115. Thus, 115 - 100 = 15, and that’s the return you’re getting.

It seems you just want to check if both strings are equal or not. For this, I suggest you to use !strcmp() instead of strcmp. This way, you will have 1 if strings match or 0 if not. You can check later how the logical operand ! works and why this is happening.

You can see the change working:

Test string[0]: a
    __STRLEN: 1
    Current buffer (value: a, length: 1)
    Current key (value: dfr, length: 3)
    __STRCMP: 0
Test string[1]: jk
    __STRLEN: 2
    Current buffer (value: jk, length: 2)
    Current key (value: dfr, length: 3)
    __STRCMP: 0
Test string[2]: dfr
    __STRLEN: 3
    Current buffer (value: dfr, length: 3)
    Current key (value: dfr, length: 3)
    __STRCMP: 1
        OK
Test string[3]: sbjk
    __STRLEN: 4
    Current buffer (value: sbjk, length: 4)
    Current key (value: dfr, length: 3)
    __STRCMP: 0