How do you allow spaces to be entered using scanf?

Question

Using the following code:

char *name = malloc(sizeof(char) + 256); 

printf(\"What is your name? \");
scanf(\"%s\", name);

printf(\"Hello %s. Nice to meet y         


        

Answer 1

Don't use scanf() to read strings without specifying a field width. You should also check the return values for errors:

#include 

#define NAME_MAX    80
#define NAME_MAX_S "80"

int main(void)
{
    static char name[NAME_MAX + 1]; // + 1 because of null
    if(scanf("%" NAME_MAX_S "[^\n]", name) != 1)
    {
        fputs("io error or premature end of line\n", stderr);
        return 1;
    }

    printf("Hello %s. Nice to meet you.\n", name);
}

Alternatively, use fgets():

#include 

#define NAME_MAX 80

int main(void)
{
    static char name[NAME_MAX + 2]; // + 2 because of newline and null
    if(!fgets(name, sizeof(name), stdin))
    {
        fputs("io error\n", stderr);
        return 1;
    }

    // don't print newline
    printf("Hello %.*s. Nice to meet you.\n", strlen(name) - 1, name);
}