How do you allow spaces to be entered using scanf

Question

Using the following code   char  name   malloc sizeof char    256     printf  What is your name      scanf   s   name    printf  Hello  s  Nice to meet you  n   name     A user can enter their name but when they enter a name with a space like Lucas Aardvark  scanf   just cuts off everything after Lucas  How do I make scanf   allow spaces

User · Answer

You may use scanf for this purpose with a little trick  Actually  you should allow user input until user hits Enter   n   This will consider every character  including space  Here is example   int main       char string 100   c    int i    printf  Enter the string        scanf   s   string     i   strlen string           length of user input till first space   do         scanf   c    amp c       string i      c           reading characters after first space  including it      while  c      n           until user hits Enter   string i - 1    0           string terminating return 0      How this works  When user inputs characters from standard input  they will be stored in string variable until first blank space  After that  rest of entry will remain in input stream  and wait for next scanf  Next  we have a for loop that takes char by char from input stream  till  n  and apends them to end of string variable  thus forming a complete string same as user input from keyboard   Hope this will help someone

User · Answer

You can use this  char name 20   scanf   20   n    name     Or this  void getText char  message  char  variable  int size       printf   n  s     message       fgets variable  sizeof char    size  stdin       sscanf variable       n    variable      char name 20   getText  Your name   name  20     DEMO

User · Answer

Try  char str 11   scanf   10 0-9a-zA-Z     str     Hope that helps

User · Answer

If someone is still looking  here s what worked for me - to read an arbitrary length of string including spaces   Thanks to many posters on the web for sharing this simple  amp  elegant solution  If it works the credit goes to them but any errors are mine   char  name  scanf    m   n s   amp name   printf    s n  name

User · Answer

While you really shouldn t use scanf   for this sort of thing  because there are much better calls such as gets   or getline    it can be done    include  lt stdio h gt   char  scan line char  buffer  int buffer size    char  scan line char  buffer  int buffer size       char  p   buffer     int count   0     do          char c         scanf   c    amp c      scan a single character           break on end of line  string terminating NUL  or end of file        if  c      r     c      n     c    0    c    EOF                p   0             break                   p     c     add the valid character into the buffer      while  count  lt  buffer size - 1       don t overrun the buffer       ensure the string is null terminated    buffer buffer size - 1    0     return buffer      define MAX SCAN LENGTH 1024  int main        char s MAX SCAN LENGTH      printf  Enter a string         scan line s  MAX SCAN LENGTH      printf  got     s   n n   s      return 0

User · Answer

Don t use scanf   to read strings without specifying a field width  You should also check the return values for errors    include  lt stdio h gt    define NAME MAX    80  define NAME MAX S  80   int main void        static char name NAME MAX   1        1 because of null     if scanf     NAME MAX S     n    name     1                fputs  io error or premature end of line n   stderr           return 1             printf  Hello  s  Nice to meet you  n   name       Alternatively  use fgets      include  lt stdio h gt    define NAME MAX 80  int main void        static char name NAME MAX   2        2 because of newline and null     if  fgets name  sizeof name   stdin                 fputs  io error n   stderr           return 1                don t print newline     printf  Hello    s  Nice to meet you  n   strlen name  - 1  name

User · Answer

You can use the fgets   function to read a string or use scanf      n s  name   so string reading will terminate upon encountering a newline character

User · Answer

People  and especially beginners  should never use scanf   s   or gets   or any other functions that do not have buffer overflow protection  unless you know for certain that the input will always be of a specific format  and perhaps not even then    Remember than scanf stands for  scan formatted  and there s precious little less formatted than user-entered data  It s ideal if you have total control of the input data format but generally unsuitable for user input   Use fgets    which has buffer overflow protection  to get your input into a string and sscanf   to evaluate it  Since you just want what the user entered without parsing  you don t really need sscanf   in this case anyway    include  lt stdio h gt   include  lt stdlib h gt   include  lt string h gt      Maximum name size   1       define MAX NAME SZ 256  int main int argC  char  argV             Allocate memory and check if okay          char  name   malloc MAX NAME SZ       if  name    NULL            printf  No memory n            return 1                Ask user for name          printf  What is your name              Get the name  with size limit          fgets name  MAX NAME SZ  stdin           Remove trailing newline  if there          if   strlen name   gt  0   amp  amp   name strlen  name  - 1       n            name strlen  name  - 1      0           Say hello          printf  Hello  s  Nice to meet you  n   name           Free memory and exit          free  name       return 0

User · Answer

This example uses an inverted scanset  so scanf keeps taking in values until it encounters a   n -- newline  so spaces get saved as well   include  lt stdio h gt   int main  int argc  char const  argv          char name 20       scanf      n s  name       printf   s n   name       return 0

User · Answer

reading string which contains spaces    include lt stdio h gt  int main        char  c  p     scanf      n s  c      p c                   since after reading then pointer points to another                         location iam using a second pointer to store the base                         address       printf   s  p      return 0

User · Answer

getline    Now part of POSIX  none-the-less   It also takes care of the buffer allocation problem that you asked about earlier  though you have to take care of freeing the memory

[c] How do you allow spaces to be entered using scanf?

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