Thread: Help with a name in scanf

Hi all,

Could someone please help, I have just started learning C and going through some
end of chapter exercises which already have me stumped.
The exercise reads like this:-

"Create a program that prompts a user for her name. Store the users name using the
scanf() function and return a greeting back to the user using her name."

I am creating programs like this with numbers, characters and floating point numbers no problem at all. But I cant get it to work with a name.

I know it's a very basic thing but I cant move on to the next chapter untill i've got it worked
out. I would really appreciate some help.

Code:

char name[50]
...
printf("What is your name? ");
scanf("%s", name);
printf("Hello there, %s\n", name);

Thank you so much nonoob.

I was missing the [50] from the char data type
(no mention of it in the chapter I just did).

I also didn't know you could have the %s conversion specifier with a char data type
(no mention of that in the chapter either).

I can move onto "CONDITIONS" now.

Again thank you very much.

Originally Posted by nonoob

Code:

char name[50]
...
printf("What is your name? ");
scanf("%s", name);
printf("Hello there, %s\n", name);

One small improvement to prevent buffer overflows...

Code:

char name[50];
...
printf("What is your name? ");
scanf("%49s", name);           // limit number of input characters 
printf("Hello there, %s\n", name);

I know it's a bit ahead of the OPs skills but there's no time like the present for forming good programming habits.

Excellent idea, 'tater. I never used it like that. You sure it shouldn't be %.49s because number to the left of decimal is output field size, number to the right is hard limit?? At least for output. I'll have to play.

Originally Posted by nonoob

Excellent idea, 'tater. I never used it like that. You sure it shouldn't be %.49s because number to the left of decimal is output field size, number to the right is hard limit?? At least for output. I'll have to play.

In scanf it's a hard limit... "%49s" will stop reading at 49 characters.... The user can type pages and pages and only the first 49 characters get loaded into the variable.