Code giving unexpected output in c

Question

The following code snippet gives unexpected output in Turbo C++ compiler:

     char a[]={'a','b','c'};
     printf("%s",a);

Why doesn't this print abc? In my understanding, strings are implemented as one dimensional character arrays in C.
Secondly, what is the difference between %s and %2s?

Answer 1

This is because your string is not zero-terminated. This will work:

char a[]={'a','b','c', '\0'};

The %2s specifies the minimum width of the printout. Since you are printing a 3-character string, this will be ignored. If you used %5s, however, your string would be padded on the left with two spaces.

Answer 2

char a[]={'a','b','c'};

Well one problem is that strings need to be null terminated:

char a[]={'a','b','c', 0};