Thread: troubles with gets() function @ void add_employee()

hello,i'm having troubles with gets() function @ void add_employee()
nothing works i can't accept data, please help me.

Code:

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


struct employee
{
       int employee_ID;
       char employee_name[50];
       int employee_age;
       char employee_DateOfBirth[10];
       char employee_address[70];
       char employee_TelNo[20];
       float emplayee_salary;
       
}employee_array[50];  // structure variable 


void print_line();     // function prototypes
void add_employee();
void edit_employee();
void delete_employee();
void search_employee();
void print_employee();


int main()
{
    int option;
   //clrscr();
   print_line();
   printf("This program provides the functionality to \n");
   printf("interface with an employee information system.");
   print_line();
   printf("Enter  [1]   -   to enter employee profile \n");
   printf("Enter  [2]   -   to edit employee \n");
   printf("Enter  [3]   -   to delete employee \n");
   printf("Enter  [4]   -   to search for employee \n");
   printf("Enter  [5]   -   to print employee information \n");
   printf("Enter  [0]   -   to exit\n\n");
   printf("Please select an option:\t");
   scanf("%d",&option);
   getchar();
   while(option != 0) 
   {
           switch(option)
                   {
                       case 1: add_employee();
                       break;
                       case 2: edit_employee();
                       break;
                       case 3: delete_employee();
                       break;
                       case 4: search_employee();
                       break;
                       case 5: print_employee();
                       break;
                       default:
                       printf("\n\nIncorrect Entry!,Please press enter and Try again!\n\n");
                       getch();
                   }
      printf("\n\n");                
      print_line();
      printf("This program provides the functionality to \n");
      printf("interface with an employee information system.");
      print_line();
      printf("Enter [ 1 ]   -   to enter employee profile \n");
      printf("Enter [ 2 ]   -   to edit employee \n");
      printf("Enter [ 3 ]   -   to delete employee \n");
      printf("Enter [ 4 ]   -   to search for employee \n");
      printf("Enter [ 5 ]   -   to print employee information \n");
      printf("Enter [ 0 ]   -   to exit\n\n");
      printf("Please select an option:\t");
      scanf("%d",&option);
   }
   getch();
}
  
  
   
void print_line()
{
  int i;
  printf("\n");
    for(i=0;i<48;i++)
     {
       printf("-");
     }
  printf("\n");
}


void add_employee() // decleration of add employee function
{    
     int i;
      printf("\nEnter employee ID or 0 to exit:\t");
      scanf("%d",&employee_array[i].employee_ID);
      while(employee_array[i].employee_ID !=0){
             printf("Enter emplayee name:\t");
             gets(employee_array[i].employee_name);
             printf("\nEnter employee age");
             scanf("%d",&employee_array[i].employee_age);
             printf("\nEnter employee Date-Of-Birth:\t"); 
             gets(employee_array[i].employee_DateOfBirth);
             printf("\nEnter employee address:\t");
             gets(employee_array[i].employee_address);
             printf("\nEnter employee telephone number");
             gets(employee_array[i].employee_TelNo);
             printf("\nEnter employee salary");
             scanf("$%f",&employee_array[i].emplayee_salary);
             printf("\n\nEnter employee ID or 0 to exit:\t");
             scanf("%d",&employee_array[i].employee_ID);
             fflush(stdin);
             i++;
     }
} 
void edit_employee()
{
     
     }
void delete_employee()
{
     
     }
void search_employee()
{
     
     }
void print_employee()
{
     
     }

DO NOT USE gets()!!!

FAQ > Why gets() is bad / Buffer Overflows - Cprogramming.com

or fflush(stdin)

FAQ > Why fflush(stdin) is wrong - Cprogramming.com

well what can i use instead ? all i know at present is scanf and gets

Thanks for the link btw, very helpful

Originally Posted by Shinzu911

well what can i use instead ? all i know at present is scanf and gets

Use fgets. It's similar to gets but does size checking. For example:

Code:

fgets(employee_array[i].employee_DateOfBirth, sizeof(employee_array[i].employee_DateOfBirth), stdin);

Couple of comments:
In add_employee() you use uninitialised variable i as an index. i could be absolutely anything.

You're probably getting hit by stray newline characters. So you type something and hit enter, what happens to the newline char? fgets (and I think gets) read the newline character from stdin and store it at the end of the string.
Scanf however does not. So in your program you'll read employee ID, then the next (f)gets will just read the pending newline character and not get any input from the user.
You could follow scanfs with a getchar() -- or use the %*c =, or wrap scanf in a function to deal with this for you. Plenty of options.
It looks pretty fragile at the moment -- having a function of scanfs without checks for success and retries will go horribly wrong on bad input.