Don't know how to sold this exersise

Write a program that requests your first name and does the following with it:
Prints it in a field three characters wider than the name.

Code:

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

int main ( void )
{
	char name[20];
	scanf ( "%s", name );
	printf ( "%s", name );//If my name is 5 characters long field must be 8
						  //printf ( "%8s", name );
	return 0;
}

But I don't know how long is scanf input ( name ). If I use strlen() function like this int x = strlen ( name ) I can't just write printf ( "%d%s",x, name). Can this exercise be solved?

I figure it out, just put *, like this printf ( "%*s", width, name );

Originally Posted by dontoo

I figure it out, just put *, like this printf ( "%*s", width, name );

I'd just put:

Code:

printf("%s   ", name);

But the one who made the assignment should lose his license to teach. I always hate assignments that make no sense or can be fixed in a way that isn't allowed because it's not what they want to teach you on that moment.

One thing though; you get a buffer overflow if the name is more than 19 characters. You should really add a length specification to the scanf. For fun, type in a hundred A's and see what happens ;-).