How to read & output an input with spaces and newlines - c

Question

I am attempting to scanf a multiline input in C and output it. However, I'm having trouble handling spaces and newline characters. If the input is:
Hello.
My name is John.
Pleased to meet you!
I want to output all three lines. But my output ends up being just:
Hello.
Here's my code:
#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
int main()
{
char s[100];
scanf("%[^\n]%*c", &s);
printf(s);
return 0;
}

Answer 1

Its much easier to use fgets():
#include <stdio.h>
int main(void)
{
char buffer[1000];
while (fgets(buffer, sizeof(buffer), stdin) && buffer[0] != '\n') {
printf("%s", buffer);
}
}
An empty line (first character is newline) ends input.
If you have to read all input first before printing the result, things get a little bit more complicated:
#include <stddef.h> // size_t
#include <stdlib.h> // EXIT_FAILURE, realloc(), free()
#include <stdio.h> // fgets(), puts()
#include <string.h> // strlen(), strcpy()
int main(void)
{
char buffer[1000];
char *text = NULL; // pointer to memory that will contain the whole text
size_t total_length = 0; // keep track of where to copy our buffer to
while (fgets(buffer, sizeof(buffer), stdin) && buffer[0] != '\n') {
size_t length = strlen(buffer); // remember so we don't have to call
// strlen() twice.
// (re)allocate memory to copy the buffer to:
char *new_text = realloc(text, total_length + length + 1); // + 1 for the
if (!new_text) { // if (re)allocation failed terminating '\0'
free(text); // clean up our mess
fputs("Not enough memory :(\n\n", stderr);
return EXIT_FAILURE;
}
text = new_text; // now its safe to discard the old pointer
strcpy(text + total_length, buffer); // strcpy instead of strcat so we don't
total_length += length; // have to care about uninitialized memory
} // on the first pass *)
puts(text); // print all of it
free(text); // never forget
}
*) and it is also more efficient since strcat() would have to find the end of text before appending the new string. Information we already have.