Help with a name in scanf

Hi all,

Could someone please help, I have just started learning C and going through some
end of chapter exercises which already have me stumped.
The exercise reads like this:-

"Create a program that prompts a user for her name. Store the users name using the
scanf() function and return a greeting back to the user using her name."

I am creating programs like this with numbers, characters and floating point numbers no problem at all. But I cant get it to work with a name.

I know it's a very basic thing but I cant move on to the next chapter untill i've got it worked
out. I would really appreciate some help.

Code:

---

char name[50]
...
printf("What is your name? ");
scanf("%s", name);
printf("Hello there, %s\n", name);

---

Thank you so much nonoob.

I was missing the [50] from the char data type
(no mention of it in the chapter I just did).

I also didn't know you could have the %s conversion specifier with a char data type
(no mention of that in the chapter either).

I can move onto "CONDITIONS" now.

Again thank you very much.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by nonoob

Code:

---

char name[50]
...
printf("What is your name? ");
scanf("%s", name);
printf("Hello there, %s\n", name);

---

---

One small improvement to prevent buffer overflows...

Code:

---

char name[50];
...
printf("What is your name? ");
scanf("%49s", name);          // limit number of input characters
printf("Hello there, %s\n", name);

---

I know it's a bit ahead of the OPs skills but there's no time like the present for forming good programming habits.

Excellent idea, 'tater. I never used it like that. You sure it shouldn't be %.49s because number to the left of decimal is output field size, number to the right is hard limit?? At least for output. I'll have to play.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by nonoob

Excellent idea, 'tater. I never used it like that. You sure it shouldn't be %.49s because number to the left of decimal is output field size, number to the right is hard limit?? At least for output. I'll have to play.

---

In scanf it's a hard limit... "%49s" will stop reading at 49 characters.... The user can type pages and pages and only the first 49 characters get loaded into the variable.