ProbIem with EOF in C

Question

I\'m writing a program which is supposed to read two strings that can contain line breaks and various other characters. Therefore, I\'m using EOF (Ctrl-Z or Ctrl-D) to end t

Answer 1

Rather than stopping reading input at EOF -- which isn't a character -- stop at ENTER.

while((c = getchar()) != '\n')
{
    if (c == EOF) /* oops, something wrong, input terminated too soon! */;
    a[x] = c;
    x++;
}

EOF is a signal that the input terminated. You're almost guaranteed that all inputs from the user end with '\n': that's the last key the user types!!!

---

Edit: you can still use Ctrl-D and clearerr() to reset the input stream.

#include <stdio.h>

int main(void) {
  char a[100], b[100];
  int c, k;

  printf("Enter a: "); fflush(stdout);
  k = 0;
  while ((k < 100) && ((c = getchar()) != EOF)) {
    a[k++] = c;
  }
  a[k] = 0;

  clearerr(stdin);

  printf("Enter b: "); fflush(stdout);
  k = 0;
  while ((k < 100) && ((c = getchar()) != EOF)) {
    b[k++] = c;
  }
  b[k] = 0;

  printf("a is [%s]; b is [%s]\n", a, b);
  return 0;
}

$ ./a.out
Enter a: two
lines (Ctrl+D right after the next ENTER)
Enter b: three
lines
now (ENTER + Ctrl+D)
a is [two
lines (Ctrl+D right after the next ENTER)
]; b is [three
lines
now (ENTER + Ctrl+D)
]
$