Thread: Scanf-ing a date as a string at once

I have a problem with acquiring a date from input as a string, this way:

Code:

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

int main()
{
    char day[10], month[2], year[4];

    printf("Insert date (mm/dd/yyyy): ");
    scanf("%s/%s/%s", day, month, year);

    while (! (strlen(day)==2 && strlen(month)==2 && strlen(year)==4) )
    {
        printf("Invalid format. Retry!\n");
        scanf("%s/%s/%s", day, month, year);
    }

    printf("Date inserted: %s/%s/%s\n", year, month, day);

    return 0;
}

When I enter something from input, it stores all the string in the first variable (i.e. day). How can I get it to work properly without using int in the first place?

I would expect something like this:

Code:

if (scanf("%9[^/]/%2[^/]/%4s", day, month, year) != 3)
{
    /* report the read error or invalid format */
}

Notice that I specified the field widths to avoid buffer overflow. This also revealed that your declaration of month and year is wrong, i.e., you should have written:

Code:

char day[10], month[3], year[5];

Otherwise you won't be able to handle double digit months or four digit years.

Well both your month and year strings are too short.

The \0 that scanf will store will always be out of bounds of the arrays.