how to remove extension from file name?

Question

I want to throw the last three character from file name and get the rest?

I have this code:

char* remove(char* mystr) {

    char tmp[] = {0};
    unsigned int x;

    for (x = 0; x < (strlen(mystr) - 3); x++)
        tmp[x] = mystr[x];

    return tmp;
}

Answer 1

Try:

char *remove(char* myStr) {
    char *retStr;
    char *lastExt;
    if (myStr == NULL) return NULL;
    if ((retStr = malloc (strlen (myStr) + 1)) == NULL) return NULL;
    strcpy (retStr, myStr);
    lastExt = strrchr (retStr, '.');
    if (lastExt != NULL)
        *lastExt = '\0';
    return retStr;
}

You'll have to free the returned string yourself. It simply finds the last . in the string and replaces it with a null terminator character. It will handle errors (passing NULL or running out of memory) by returning NULL.

It won't work with things like /this.path/is_bad since it will find the . in the non-file portion but you could handle this by also doing a strrchr of /, or whatever your path separator is, and ensuring it's position is NULL or before the . position.

---

A more general purpose solution to this problem could be:

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

// remove_ext: removes the "extension" from a file spec.
//   myStr is the string to process.
//   extSep is the extension separator.
//   pathSep is the path separator (0 means to ignore).
// Returns an allocated string identical to the original but
//   with the extension removed. It must be freed when you're
//   finished with it.
// If you pass in NULL or the new string can't be allocated,
//   it returns NULL.

char *remove_ext (char* myStr, char extSep, char pathSep) {
    char *retStr, *lastExt, *lastPath;

    // Error checks and allocate string.

    if (myStr == NULL) return NULL;
    if ((retStr = malloc (strlen (myStr) + 1)) == NULL) return NULL;

    // Make a copy and find the relevant characters.

    strcpy (retStr, myStr);
    lastExt = strrchr (retStr, extSep);
    lastPath = (pathSep == 0) ? NULL : strrchr (retStr, pathSep);

    // If it has an extension separator.

    if (lastExt != NULL) {
        // and it's to the right of the path separator.

        if (lastPath != NULL) {
            if (lastPath < lastExt) {
                // then remove it.

                *lastExt = '\0';
            }
        } else {
            // Has extension separator with no path separator.

            *lastExt = '\0';
        }
    }

    // Return the modified string.

    return retStr;
}

int main (int c, char *v[]) {
    char *s;
    printf ("[%s]\n", (s = remove_ext ("hello", '.', '/'))); free (s);
    printf ("[%s]\n", (s = remove_ext ("hello.", '.', '/'))); free (s);
    printf ("[%s]\n", (s = remove_ext ("hello.txt", '.', '/'))); free (s);
    printf ("[%s]\n", (s = remove_ext ("hello.txt.txt", '.', '/'))); free (s);
    printf ("[%s]\n", (s = remove_ext ("/no.dot/in_path", '.', '/'))); free (s);
    printf ("[%s]\n", (s = remove_ext ("/has.dot/in.path", '.', '/'))); free (s);
    printf ("[%s]\n", (s = remove_ext ("/no.dot/in_path", '.', 0))); free (s);

    return 0;
}

and this produces:

[hello]
[hello]
[hello]
[hello.txt]
[/no.dot/in_path]
[/has.dot/in]
[/no]

Answer 2

Use rindex to locate the "." character. If the string is writable, you can replace it with the string terminator char ('\0') and you're done.

char * rindex(const char *s, int c);

 DESCRIPTION
 The rindex() function locates the last character matching c (converted to a char) in the null-terminated string s.

Answer 3

If you literally just want to remove the last three characters, because you somehow know that your filename has an extension exactly three chars long (and you want to keep the dot):

char *remove_three(const char *filename) {
    size_t len = strlen(filename);
    char *newfilename = malloc(len-2);
    if (!newfilename) /* handle error */;
    memcpy(newfilename, filename, len-3);
    newfilename[len - 3] = 0;
    return newfilename;
}

Or let the caller provide the destination buffer (which they must ensure is long enough):

char *remove_three(char *dst, const char *filename) {
    size_t len = strlen(filename);
    memcpy(dst, filename, len-3);
    dst[len - 3] = 0;
    return dst;
}

If you want to generically remove a file extension, that's harder, and should normally use whatever filename-handling routines your platform provides (basename on POSIX, _wsplitpath_s on Windows) if there's any chance that you're dealing with a path rather than just the final part of the filename:

/* warning: may modify filename. To avoid this, take a copy first
   dst may need to be longer than filename, for example currently
   "file.txt" -> "./file.txt". For this reason it would be safer to
   pass in a length with dst, and/or allow dst to be NULL in which
   case return the length required */
void remove_extn(char *dst, char *filename) {
    strcpy(dst, dirname(filename));
    size_t len = strlen(dst);

    dst[len] = '/';
    dst += len+1;

    strcpy(dst, basename(filename));
    char *dot = strrchr(dst, '.');
    /* retain the '.' To remove it do dot[0] = 0 */
    if (dot) dot[1] = 0;
}

Come to think of it, you might want to pass dst+1 rather than dst to strrchr, since a filename starting with a dot maybe shouldn't be truncated to just ".". Depends what it's for.

Answer 4

I would try the following algorithm:

last_dot = -1

for each char in str:
    if char = '.':
        last_dot = index(char)

if last_dot != -1:
    str[last_dot] = '\0'