Few questions about C syntax

Question

I have a few questions about C syntax.

1. ch = (char *) malloc( sizeof( char ) * strlen(src) ); What do the first brackets mean (char *) ?

Answer 1

1. The (char ) at the beginning of the first statement is a typecast. By default malloc returns a void which should be fine to assign to a char*, but in other cases typecasting is required.

2. You are correct single quotes should be used around charaters.

3. Saying scanf sometimes doesn't work is a meaningless statement without example code.