Why am I not able to enter desired number of inputs? - c

Question

The problem is about taking input of strings x number of times using an array of pointers. x is the value entered by the user. I wrote the following code for the same. But the program is taking only x-1 inputs.
I have inserted fflush(stdin) because I think the scanf is consuming an enter first but I don't know from where.
I have tried using gets but with no use.
#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
int main()
{
//code to take input in an array of pointers
int x,i,j,length;
char ch[50],*t;
printf("How many names you want to sort:\n");
scanf("%d",&x);
char *names[x];
char *p;
printf("Enter the names:\n");
for(i=0;i<x;i++)
{
fflush(stdin);
scanf("%[^\n]s",ch);
length = strlen(ch);
p = (char *)malloc((length+1) * sizeof(char));
strcpy(p,ch);
names[i] = p;
}
return 0;
}

Answer 1

Why bother with complex format strings if you don't have to? Use fgets.
#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
void err(const char * msg) {
fprintf(stderr, msg);
exit(1);
}
int main()
{
int x,i;
char ch[50];
printf("How many names you want to sort:\n");
if(!fgets(ch, 50, stdin)) err("Error reading line");
if(sscanf(ch, "%d",&x) != 1) err("Could not read integer");
// Better than using VLA
char **names = malloc(x*sizeof(*names));
if(!names) err("Error allocating names");
printf("Enter the names:\n");
for(i=0;i<x;i++) {
if(!fgets(ch, 50, stdin)) err("Error reading line");
ch[strcspn(ch, "\n")] = 0; // Remove newline
if(!(names[i] = strdup(ch))) err("Error duplicating string");
}
for(int i=0; i<x; i++)
printf("name %d: %s\n", i, names[i]);
}
Whenever a function has a return value that may indicate an error you should ALWAYS check it, and here that is the case for malloc, fgets, strdup and sscanf and. Read the documentation to find out what it actually returns to see how to check for errors. sscanf returns the number of successful assignments, and the other three returns a pointer which is NULL on failure.
You wrote in the comments that you are learning from the book "Let us C". A better fitting title would be "How to not code C". I've had a quick look at it and, it is really really bad. Apart from teaching very outdated C, it also teaches very bad habits in general, and many of the things you can read is completely WRONG. Actually, the majority of questions about C can be traced to that book, or at least could have. Two prime examples is that it consistently avoids very important stuff, such as error checking functions like scanf and malloc. I have not read every line, but I think it does not even mention how to error check scanf even once. It also uses the function gets which is not only deprecated but completely removed from newer C standards because it is so dangerous. It also says that you can modify a string literal, which is undefined behavior in C.