Thread: Request for feedback -- exercise solution.

Hey, folks!

I'd appreciate if you could review my solution to the following exercise for correctness. I've tested it for several different input and sequential calls, and I couldn't spot any obvious bugs. Any suggestions for improvement are welcome!

Exercise
"Design and test a function that reads the first word from a line of input into an array and discards the rest of the line. Define a word as a sequence of characters with no blanks, tabs, or newlines in it." (I've added three features the exercise does not explicitly ask for -- array is always null-terminated, bsize (buffer size) is passed as an argument to the function, and function returns the number of characters read.)

My solution

Code:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <ctype.h>

int msh_getw(char* buffer, int bsize) {
  int cnt = 0;
  while (cnt < bsize) {
    *buffer = getchar();
    if ( isspace(*buffer)) {
      *buffer = '\0';
      while( getchar() != '\n');
      return cnt;
    }
    cnt++;
    buffer++;
  }
  
  *(buffer - 1) = '\0';
  while( getchar() != '\n');
  return cnt;
}

Thanks for you time!

You are performing the input retrieval within the function. I do not believe that to be the intent of the exercise. For example, what if you want the first word of a line read from a file, rather than a line read directly from the user?

Also, comments in your function would be a nice addition.

*buffer = getchar();
getchar() returns EOF and ...
Does it handle empty input line properly?

Originally Posted by Bayint Naung

*buffer = getchar();
getchar() returns EOF and ...
Does it handle empty input line properly?

Oh yeah...

I'll work on those.