Issue printing strings from struct in c - arrays

Question

I am trying to write a program that takes first names and last names from stdin separated by newline and stores them in char arrays inside of a struct array. Everything seems to be working fine until I want to print them in a certain way. I need the names to be formatted like this on the output:
<lastName>, <firstName> That is why I added a function to remove the trailing newline from the end of each line when parsing the values. It however does not return anything when doing this:
printf("%s, %s",people[0].lastName, people[0].firstName);
However when printing the values on seperate lines like
printf("%s\n",people[0].lastName);
printf("%s\n",people[0].firstName);
or using puts
puts(people[0].lastName);
it works just fine.
When I comment out the removeNewline() function it seems to get rid of the problem. But with the newline at the end I cannot format the output the way I desribed.
Here is my full code:
#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
#define MAX_STRING_LENGTH 100
#define MAX_PEOPLE 42
struct Person{
char firstName [MAX_STRING_LENGTH];
char lastName[MAX_STRING_LENGTH];
};
void removeNewline(char * string){
for(int i = 0; string[i] != '\0'; i++){
if(string[i] == '\n'){
string[i] = '\0';
}
}
}
int parseData(struct Person * people){
int peopleCounter;
for(peopleCounter = 0; peopleCounter < MAX_PEOPLE; peopleCounter++){
char firstName[MAX_STRING_LENGTH];
char lastName[MAX_STRING_LENGTH];
if(fgets(firstName,MAX_STRING_LENGTH,stdin) == NULL){
break;
}
fgets(lastName,MAX_STRING_LENGTH,stdin);
removeNewline(firstName);
removeNewline(lastName);
strcpy(people[peopleCounter].firstName,firstName);
strcpy(people[peopleCounter].lastName,lastName);
}
return peopleCounter;
}
int main(int argc, char *argv[]){
struct Person people [MAX_PEOPLE];
parseData(people);
//PROBLEM
printf("%s, %s",people[0].firstName, people[0].lastName);
for(int i = 0; i < 2; i++){
printperson(people, i);
}
}
I am giving the values from a text file through redirection like so:
./main <people.txt
people.txt example:
George
Washington
Thomas
Jefferson
desired output:
Washington, George
Jefferson, Thomas

Answer 1

I am not able to reproduce the issue. Here are the minor changes:
removeNewline(): return after we process the first newline. Streamlined it a bit.
parseData(): store directly in struct instead of temporary variables. Renamed peopleCounter to i as it was it unnecessary long. Check return value of 2nd fgets(), too.
main(): Removed call to printperson() and looped over the returned values with the two arguments variables switched in the printf() statement for the expected order.
#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
#define MAX_STRING_LENGTH 100
#define MAX_PEOPLE 42
struct Person{
char firstName[MAX_STRING_LENGTH];
char lastName[MAX_STRING_LENGTH];
};
void removeNewline(char *s) {
for(;;) {
*s *= (*s != '\n');
if(!*s++) return;
}
}
int parseData(struct Person *people){
int i = 0;
for(; i < MAX_PEOPLE; i++){
if(!fgets((people + i)->firstName,MAX_STRING_LENGTH,stdin))
break;
removeNewline((people + i)->firstName);
if(!fgets((people + i)->lastName,MAX_STRING_LENGTH,stdin))
break;
removeNewline((people + i)->lastName);
}
return i;
}
int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
struct Person people[MAX_PEOPLE];
int n = parseData(people);
for(int i = 0; i < n; i++) {
printf("%s, %s\n", people[i].lastName, people[i].firstName);
}
}
and the output is:
Washington, George
Jefferson, Thomas