Thread: Using fgets, removing last character

Hello,

I have ran into a slight problem. Of course I always did it the bad way I guess and now I'm looking for a solution. Here is my current code:

Code:

int main() {
	char sentence[256];

	printf("Enter your sentence here: ");
	fgets(sentence, 255, stdin);
	sentence[strlen(sentence)-1] = '\0';
	
	printf("Sentence: %s\n", sentence);
	
	return 0;
}

The only thing is, I don't like calling strlen() in that situtation. I've tried everything from *(sentence--) = '\0' to sentence[*sentence-1] = '\0' and I just can't seem to find a way.

To keep an open mind, is there actually a way or is this [current way] the best way?


Thank you for your time,
- Stack Overflow

Originally Posted by Perspective

fgets will automatically append the '\0' so long as there is no error in reading.

To add to this, this is why you should check the return value of your functions...

Quzah.

I agree,

Though in fact fgets returns a char * and when dealing with the function, or maybe even in Linux itself, my sentence I retrieve retrieves the '\n' at the end of the string for some strange reason.

I will look into this with more detail.

- Stack Overflow

I see,

Thanks. A program I'm writing doesn't like the whole '\n' character, and my algorithm usually gets messed up if that happens, so I'm going to take another approach:

Code:

int main() {
	char sentence[256], *sent;

	printf("Enter your sentence here: ");
	sent = fgets(sentence, 255, stdin);
	sent[strlen(sentence) - 1] = '\0';
	
	printf("Sentence: %s\n", sent); // use sent instead of sentence from now on
	
	return 0;
}

That shouldn't conflict with sentence now, and the whole length of the string recursively calling itself. I thought there would be an easier way, but I guess this is the best way around it for now.


Thank you for your time,
- Stack Overflow

the reason that

Code:

*(sentence--) = '\0

doesn't work is because the memory address is at the beggining for strings. So sentence-- will be one before the actual string. It really is the best way, because either way you will have to get to the end of a string. if you want you could use (with caution)scanf

Code:

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

int main(void){
        char string[100];
        printf("Enter a string\n");
        if(!scanf("%100s*[^\n]",string)){
                printf("Failure\n");
                return EXIT_FAILURE;
        }
        printf("%s",string);
        return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}

this won't get spaces though

Code:

if( (c=strrchr( buf, '\n' )) )
    *c='\0';

With, or without the r.

Quzah.

To quote the header file I got with gcc

Originally Posted by stdio.h

/* Get a newline-terminated string from stdin, removing the newline.
DO NOT USE THIS FUNCTION!! There is no limit on how much it will read.

That is in reference to gets, always use fgets over gets.

Even though it dosnt have built in array overrun you could always just code in an if statement to tell it the last chr is null if it exceeds size and then you wouldnt have to worry about \n being there

Yeah, because you'd be too busy worrying about it crashing your program or causing a nice little security problem because someone used a buffer overrun to trash you OS or ...

Quzah.

Thanks everyone,

I too agree there is no possible excuse to use gets() for any compilation. Why they created these functions, hence gets() and fflush(), still comes unclear to me.

I like the method:

Code:

if( (c=strrchr( buf, '\n' )) )
    *c='\0';

It's the fastest, safest, and most reasonable approach in my view to remove the '\n' character from the string.


Once again thank you all, and thank you quzah,
- Stack Overflow

fflush is a useful function, however, people always use it wrong around these parts, trying to flus input streams instead of output...

Quzah.