Input buffer size question?!

char buffer[80];

fgets(buffer,sizeof buffer,stdin);

How can i make the buffer size the exact size of the input that will be entered in so if i enter lets say "hello" and the buffer will hold H,E,L,L,O,<garbage>, instead of having garbage right after hello and then the null terminator at 79? how can i make it so that the buffer just holds H,E,L,L,O,\n instead? or the exact size of any word entered in? so i can compare strings in the future

Quote:

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Originally Posted by shivam1992

How can i make the buffer size the exact size of the input that will be entered in so if i enter lets say "hello" and the buffer will hold H,E,L,L,O,<garbage>, instead of having garbage right after hello and then the null terminator at 79? how can i make it so that the buffer just holds H,E,L,L,O,\n instead? or the exact size of any word entered in? so i can compare strings in the future

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In C, a string is a contiguous sequence of characters terminated by a null character. Therefore, "hello" would be stored as 'h', 'e', 'l', 'l', 'o', '\0', <garbage>. Thus, the <garbage> will be ignored when comparing strings since the comparison stops at the '\0'.

That said, since you are using fgets, the newline character will also be stored (just before the null character), unless the input including the newline is 80 characters or more.