How would you improve it?

[cooldude1]

The code below searches for the first instance of string "b" inside of string "a."

char* stringmatch( char* a, const char* b )
{
while( *a )
{
char *s = a, *t = b;
while( (*s++ == *t++) && *s && *t );
if( *t == 0 )
return a;
a++;
}
return 0;
}

How would you improve it?

[whiteflags]

Here you go.

#include <string.h>
const char *stringmatch ( const char *a , const char *b )
{
    return strstr ( a , b );
}

[zacs7]

There are far more better ways, if you're trying to find a sub-string within a string...

Knuth-Morris-Pratt algorithm - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Rabin-Karp string search algorithm - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[cooldude1]

Let me look at that ... At code level I was thinking if it can be made more efficient

Looked up strstr, it internally does the same thing

[iMalc]

To get something more efficient, the main change you'd have to make is to use a different algorithm such as the Boyer-Moore algorithm. There are plenty of variations on that kind of algorithm, each specialised to certain conditions such as letter frequency and the length of the string to find etc.
If you want it faster and the runtime library functions don't cut it, then you're going to have to do spend some time researching these algorithms.

[Elysia]

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