strings

Hi,

So i am trying to improve programs i write. My programs are usually for calculations due to my uni course.

At the moment my programs take in integers using scanf, but if someone puts a letter in by mistake, they crash so i want to use strings.

Code:

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

int main()
{
    char *a, *b, *c;
    printf("Please input a, b and c in the form of a b c\n");
    scanf("%s", a);
    scanf("%s", b);
    scanf("%s", c);
    printf ("%s %s %s", a, b, c);
    return 0;
}

If i completely remove anything to do with b and c, the program can print a, but once b and c come along, it crashes. What am i doing wrong? I have no idea of the length these variables could be so i cant use arrays i dont think.

is there a neater way of doing this?
thanks

your a,b,c are uninitialized pointers - you do not know where they point - so you are trying to write to the random memory location.


You need arrays - to own the memory you'll use

Code:

char buf[100];
scanf("%99s", buf);
printf("%s", buf);

thank you. what does the 99 do?

Originally Posted by a.mlw.walker

thank you. what does the 99 do?

Make sure that you don't read in more data than there is space for.

--
Mats