How to properly make a dynamic command-line menu? - c

Question

More precisely.. How do I add a "go back to main menu" function as all other softwares and games have?
void showMenu()
{
puts( "1. Create school\n"
"2. Add room\n"
"3.Add student to room\n"
"4.Find student\n"
"5. Show students in room\n"
"\n" "6. Exit");
}
int main()
{
clrscr();
studentList *foundStudent;
int input;
showMenu();
while( scanf("%d", &input) )
{
if(input == 6)
{
periods("Exiting");
break;
}
if(input == 1)
{
school *school;
school = createSchool();
}
if(input == 2)
{
int room, roomNr;
printf("Enter room Nr. and Class:");
scanf("%d %d", &room, &roomNr);
}
}
return 0;
}
Anything I attempted didn't work and just created more redundancy, never expected how goto can be so confusing.
Although switch makes more sense, I don't believe it fixes my problem.

Answer 1

Here is a working example.
The solution for this problem was simply making a "menu within a menu" kind of, I did use some gotos but as far as commandline menu goes, this may be all.
#define clrscr() printf("\e[1;1H\e[2J")
void periods(char* message)
{
const int trigger = 500; // ms
const int numDots = 3;
while (1)
{
// Return and clear with spaces, then return and print prompt.
printf("\r%*s\r%s", sizeof(message) - 1 + numDots, "", message);
fflush(stdout);
// Print numDots number of dots, one every trigger milliseconds.
for (int i = 0; i < numDots; i++)
{
usleep(trigger * 1000);
fputc('.', stdout);
fflush(stdout);
}
break;
}
}
void showmenu()
{
clrscr();
puts("1. New Game\n"
"2. Load Game\n"
"3. Credits\n\n"
"4. Exit\n" );
}
int checkString(char *str)
{
int status = 0;
int ln = strlen(str);
for(int i = 0; i < ln; i++)
{
if(isdigit( str[i] ) )
status = 1;
break;
}
return status;
}
int main(){
char choice;
clrscr();
int status, isNum = -101;
char *name, *buffer, YN;
showmenu();
while(1)
{
scanf(" %c", &choice);
if( isdigit(choice) )
{
break;
}
else
{
fflush(stdin);
printf("Please only enter numbers!\n");
sleep(1);
showmenu();
}
}
do{
switch(choice)
{
case '1':
{
createG:;
clrscr();
printf("Enter name or press 0 to return\n");
scanf("%s", buffer);
status = checkString(buffer);
if(status == 1)
{
clrscr();
break;
}
clrscr();
name = (char*)malloc(strlen(buffer)+1);
strcpy(name, buffer);
printf("New game created, welocome %s!\n");
for(int i = 0; i < 5; i++)
{
sleep(1);
printf("%d\n", i);
}
break;
}
case '2':
{
int what;
caseL:;
clrscr();
printf("No saves!\n Create new game? [Y/N] \n to return press 0\n");
scanf(" %c", &YN);
if(YN == 'N') what = 0;
if(YN == '0') what = -1;
if(YN == 'Y') what = 1;
switch(YN)
{
case 'N':
{
goto caseL;
}
case '0':
{
break;
}
case 'Y':
{
choice = 1;
goto createG;
break;
}
}
break;
}
case '3':
{
periods("Hello World");
break;
}
case '4':
{
clrscr();
periods("Goodbye");
clrscr();
exit(1);
}
default:
{
printf("Wrong input\n Try again");
sleep(1);
break;
}
}
}while(choice != -2);
return 0;
}
This may still need a lot of error checking and handling for "unexpected" inputs but it answers the problem.