Reading Strings

[dacbo]

Ok this question probably has a simple answer but I currently can't find any answers on here or google.

I'm relatively new to C but have experience in other programming languages.

I'm writing a program where I need to read in a surname such as "Smith", "Jones" etc.. which is fine, by using scanf i can read these in to my program fine.

However I now need to read in double barrell surnames along with standard ones, so the user may input, "Jones", "Smith Jones", "Smith von Jones" etc...

Bearing in mind that I need to be able to read in any of these three cases from one input string how would I go about this? As scanf stops at whitespaces i cant do that and if I put in multiple clauses it has to be either 1, 2 or 3 words, not an option of the three.

Any help would be appreciated.

Cheers

[TactX]

Use fgets() instead.

[Ancient Dragon]

use fgets() instead of scanf(), it will copy everything you type into the variable, including the <Enter>, or '\n'. So if you don't want '\n' you will have to truncate it. The third parameter to fgets for keybord input is stdin.

[odysseus.lost]

Or write your own function by using fgetc() which is reading character by character.

[dacbo]

ok i've written a new function using getchar()...

    
    char name[30];
    int n=0;
    while (n <=30 && name[n] != '\n') {
          name[n] = getchar();
          n++;
          }

however it doesnt stop when i get to the carriage return, am I using the right character for not name[n]?

[Ancient Dragon]

your fuction is testing the value of name[n] before there has been anything assigned to the n'th character position.

while( n < 30 && (name[n] = getchar()) != '\n))
   n++;

[dacbo]

yup fixed that but it still waits until 30 characters (including carriage returns) have been inputted before finishing the function

[Ancient Dragon]

getchar() does not return to your program until after you hit the <Enter> key. There is no standard C solution of getting the characters as they are pressed. But some compilers support non-standard solutions found in conio.h -- look for _kbhit(), getch() and getche().

[dacbo]

ok it works now by using the gets() feature

i've set the size of the name array to be 100 chars so there should be no problems with overflow

thoughts?

[trucutu]

If I have learned one thing it's that users will always find marvellous ways to mess up any program... So, don't think you're safe with a 100 char array...

[dacbo]

hmm yeah but I cant seem to find any better way of doing it unless someone has a better idea?

[Ancient Dragon]

well, gets() is a horrible function and should be avoided at all costs. use fgets() instead because it will not allow buffer overflows

char name[25];
fgets(name,sizeof(name),stdin);

[dacbo]

ah cheers thats great

and just to check, fgets is a standard C function yeah? no C++ in there?

[Ancient Dragon]

ah cheers thats great

and just to check, fgets is a standard C function yeah?

yes, pure C -- no c++ there.