Function to perform a logical NOT in a string

Question

I am using "tinyexpr", a cute library that can solve mathematical formulas in a string and I extended it such that it does logical operations with two operands as well. However I wasn't sure how to handle the logical NOT as it is performed on a single operand, which is why I just created a small function that does just that outside of tinyexpr:

void handle_logical_not (char * expr)
{
    int i;

    for(i = 0; expr[i] != '\0'; i++)
    {
        if(expr[i] == '!')
        {
            i++;

            if(expr[i] == '!')
            {
                handle_logical_not(&expr[i]); /* Recursively handle subexpressions */
            }
            if( (expr[i] >= '0' && expr[i] <= '9') || (expr[i] == '-' && (expr[i+1] >= '0' && expr[i+1] <= '9')) )
            {
                long int    val = 0;
                char*       end = NULL;
                size_t      len = 0;

                if(expr[i] == '0')  val = strtol(&expr[i], &end, 8);
                else                val = strtol(&expr[i], &end, 10);

                expr[i-1] = '0' + !val;

                len = (uintptr_t)&expr[MAX_EXPR] - (uintptr_t)end;

                memmove(&expr[i], end, len);
            }
        }
    }
}

You will normally pass a statically allocated string (an expression) to this function and it modifies it directly if it detects a logical NOT operation. For example "!0+!0+!!0" and the function will replace it like that: "1+1+0"

Then you can pass the potentially modified string to tinyexpr for further evaluation. Sadly, this obviously adds an additional complexity overhead.

---

Remarks and Flaws:

• As a bonus it adds a case for octal values.
• It does not skip whitespace characters

Answer 1

Declare when needed

// size_t      len = 0;
// ...
// len = (uintptr_t)&expr[MAX_EXPR] - (uintptr_t)end;

size_t len = (uintptr_t)&expr[MAX_EXPR] - (uintptr_t)end;

Scale task to problem size

Consider the string may only be a few bytes, yet MAX_EXPR may be a million. Rather than move lots of bytes, move what is needed.

size_t len = strlen(end) + 1;

(I may have an off-by-one oops here - worthy of more review.)

Note: errno side-effect

Using strtol(), handle_logical_not() may set errno.

+ is a sign too

expr[i] == '-' does not account for + as a sign character.

Octal -123?

if(expr[i] == '0') val = strtol(&expr[i], &end, 8); does not take into account an octal number may be signed. strtol() and "%o" allow negative octal values.

Pedantic: long strings

String array indexing may exceed INT_MAX. Use size_t i.

Nice simply recursion use

Even though a non-recursive solution is possible, this simply handles that issue.

Save time

Use an auto-formatter.

Style

Consider the terser:

            // long int    val = 0;
            long val = 0;

Alternative

Rather than if( (expr[i] >= '0' && expr[i] <= '9') || ..., consider calling strtol(&expr[i], &end, 0) and check for conversion success.

Bonus: accepts white-space, + sign and hexadecimal.

Pedantic: -0

For rare non-2's complement char, use for(i = 0; ((unsigned char *)expr)[i] != '\0'; i++) to not stop on a -0.

Likely irrelevant in next C2x version.