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For an instance if I store ABCDE from scanf function, the later printf function gives me ABCDE as output. So what is the point of assigning the size of the string(Here 4).
#include <stdio.h>
int main() {
int c[4];
printf("Enter your name:");
scanf("%s",c);
printf("Your Name is:%s",c);
return 0;
}
I'll start with, don't use int array to store strings!
int c[4] allocates an array of 4 integers. An int is typically 4 bytes, so usually this would be 16 bytes (but might be 8 or 32 or something else on some platforms).
Then, you use this allocation first to read characters with scanf. If you enter ABCDE, it uses up 6 characters (there is an extra 0 byte at the end of the string marking the end, which needs space too), which happens to fit into the memory reserved for array of 4 integers. Now you could be really unlucky and have a platform where int has a so called "trap representation", which would cause your program to crash. But, if you are not writing the code for some very exotic device, there won't be. Now it just so happens, that this code is going to work, for the same reason memcpy is going to work: char type is special in C, and allows copying bytes to and from different types.
Same special treatment happens, when you print the int[4] array with printf using %s format. It works, because char is special.
This also demonstrates how very unsafe scanf and printf are. They happily accept c you give them, and assume it is a char array with valid size and data.
But, don't do this. If you want to store a string, use char array. Correct code for this would be:
#include <stdio.h>
int main() {
char c[16]; // fits 15 characters plus terminating 0
printf("Enter your name:");
int items = scanf("%15s",c); // note: added maximum characters
// scanf returns number of items read successfully, *always* check that!
if (items != 1) {
return 1; // exit with error, maybe add printing error message
}
printf("Your Name is: %s\n",c); // note added newline, just as an example
return 0;
}
The size of an array must be defined while declaring a C String variable because it is used to calculate how many characters are going to be stored inside the string variable and thus how much memory will be reserved for your string. If you exceed that amount the result is undefined behavior.
You have used int c , not char c . In C, a char is only 1 byte long, while a int is 4 bytes. That's why you didn't face any issues.
(Simplifying a fair amount)
When you initialize that array of length 4, C goes and finds a free spot in memory that has enough consecutive space to store 4 integers. But if you try to set c[4] to something, C will write that thing in the memory just after your array. Who knows what’s there? That might not be free, so you might be overwriting something important (generally bad). Also, if you do some stuff, and then come back, something else might’ve used that memory slot (properly) and overwritten your data, replacing it with bizarre, unrelated, and useless (to you) data.
In C language the last of the string is '\0'.
If you print with the below function, you can see the last character of the string.
scanf("%s", c); add the last character, '\0'.
So, if you use another function, getc, getch .., you should consider adding the laster character by yourself.
#include<stdio.h>
#include<string.h>
int main(){
char c[4+1]; // You should add +1 for the '\0' character.
char *p;
int len;
printf("Enter your name:");
scanf("%s", c);
len = strlen(c);
printf("Your Name is:%s (%d)\n", c, len);
p = c;
do {
printf("%x\n", *(p++));
} while((len--)+1);
return 0;
}
Enter your name:1234
Your Name is:1234 (4)
31
32
33
34
0 --> last character added by scanf("%s);
ffffffae --> garbage
I'm trying to write a program that does the following:
Enter a word: supercalifragilisticoespialidoso
The word's length is: 32.
Enter a smaller number than the length: 23
The word cut on letter 23 is: supercalifragilisticoes.
For that I'm doing:
#include <stdio.h>
#include<string.h>
#define DIM 99
int main() {
char name[DIM], name2[DIM];
int length, length2;
printf("Enter a word: ");
scanf("%s", name);
length = strlen(name);
printf("The word's length is: %d\n", length);
printf("Enter a smaller number than the length: ");
scanf("%d", &length2);
name2 = name[length2];
printf("The word cut on the letter %d is: %c", length2, name2);
return 0;
}
But I get
main.c:16:11: error: assignment to expression with array type
The problem is in the line name2 = name[length2], that's the way I found to create the new smaller word, but it's not right.
Could someone please help?
The mistake is in the line
name2 = name[length2];
You're trying to assign a character (the one of index length2 inside name) to an array (name2).
What you actually want to do is this:
strncpy(name2, name, length2);
name2[length2] = '\0';
This copies the first length2 bytes of name into name2 and adds a terminating null character for safety (strncpy doesn't do it if all of the bytes are written).
If you don't intend to use name again, you could as well remove name2 altogether and add a null character to name:
name[length2] = '\0';
You're also printing a string with a %c format specifier on the last printf call. You should use %s instead.
Other answers have suggested how you might make a copy of the initial substring of your input or how to modify the input string in place. Those are perfectly good approaches, and both have plenty of uses in real-world programs.
However, if all your program needs to do is print the wanted substring then there is no need to do any string manipulation at all. printf can do the job by itself. Given the variables as you declared them and this code ...
scanf("%s", name);
length = strlen(name);
printf("The word's length is: %d\n", length);
printf("Enter a smaller number than the length: ");
scanf("%d", &length2);
... you can use a printf format to print name into a bounded-length field whose length is given by another printf argument:
printf("%.*s\n", length2, name);
That also adds a newline after, which is usually what one wants, but you can leave that off if you prefer.
The .* in the formatting directive indicates that a "precision" is being specified for the field via a printf argument. Other variations can express a fixed precision directly in the format. The significance of a precision depends somewhat on the directive type, but for s directives it is the maximum number of characters to be printed from the corresponding string argument.
There are two main errors in your code, and a couple of other minor points.
First, you can't directly assign arrays (be they character strings or any other array type) in C; for nul-terminated char arrays (strings), you can copy one to another using the strcpy function, or copy part of one to another using strncpy (which is what you want in your case).
Second, you can't print a string using the %c format specifier – you need %s for those.
And, a less serious issue (but one to avoid, if you want to be a good programmer) is that functions that work with string lengths (like strlen and strncpy) generally use size_t types, rather than int; and these require using the %zu format specifier, in place of %d.
Here's a version of your code that does what you want:
#include <stdio.h>
#include<string.h>
#define DIM 99
int main()
{
char name[DIM], name2[DIM] = { 0 }; // Fill with zeros to start, so we will have a nul terminator
size_t length, length2; // Strictly, use "size_t" for "strlen" and "strncpy"
printf("Enter a word: ");
scanf("%s", name);
length = strlen(name);
printf("The word's length is: %zu\n", length); // Use "%zu" for the "size_t" type
printf("Enter a smaller number than the length: ");
scanf("%zu", &length2); //Again, "%zu" for "size_t"
strncpy(name2, name, length2); // Use this function to copy a substring!
printf("The word cut on the letter %zu is: %s", length2, name2);// Note that you need "%s" to print a string
return 0;
}
There are some other 'safety measures' that you can add to your code, to prevent buffer overruns and other faults. One would be to limit the initial string input to at most DIM - 1 characters; this would be trivial if you had a hard-coded value of 99 in place of DIM, because then you could use a call like the following:
scanf("%98s", name); // Read at most 98 characters (leaving space for the nul-terminator)
However, the macro DIM cannot be used inside the quoted format string. Instead, you can write its value (minus 1) into a separate string and use that as the format argument to scanf; so, we replace our initial scanf call, like so:
// scanf("%s", name); // This has the potential to overrun the "name" array!
char fmt[8];
sprintf(fmt, "%%%ds", DIM - 1); // Write "%98s" into the "fmt" string ...
scanf(fmt, name); // ...and use that for the "scanf" format
(Note that some compilers will warn about not using a string literal for the format argument, and some programmers may not 'approve' of doing so; however, it is perfectly legal C and, IMHO, a valid use of the scanf function.)
The assignment:
name2 = name[length2];
does not have the semantics you appear to have assumed. Rather name2 is an array while name[length2] is a a single character at the index length2 of the array name.
In any event arrays are not first-class data types in C and you cannot assign one array to another (as it appears you were perhaps intending) let alone assigning a char for an array.
Here you might explicitly strncpy() to copy the sub-string, but in this case that is perhaps unnecessary. You can simply remove the name2 array and:
printf( "The word cut on the letter %d is: ", length2 ) ;
for( int i = 0; i < length && i < length2; i++ )
{
putchar( name[i] ) ;
}
If you truly need to store the sub-string rather then simply outputting it then:
int i = 0 ;
for( i = 0; i < length && i < length2; i++ )
{
name2[i] = name[i] ;
}
name2[i] = '\0' ;
Both have the advantage of behaving deterministically if length2 were less than zero or greater than length which you fail to check.
Using strncpy():
int len = (length2 < 0 || length2 > length) ?
length :
length2 ;
strncpy( name2, name, len ) ;
name2[len] = '\0' ;
Of course all those length checks are largely defeated by the lack of safety in acquiring name in the manner you have in the first instance. Consider using fgets() instead, or even getchar() in a loop.
I'm new to C and I'm trying to write a program that prints the ASCII value for every letter in a name that the user enters. I attempted to store the letters in an array and try to print each ASCII value and letter of the name separately but, for some reason, it only prints the value of the first letter.
For example, if I write "Anna" it just prints 65 and not the values for the other letters in the name. I think it has something to do with my sizeof(name)/sizeof(char) part of the for loop, because when I print it separately, it only prints out 1.
I can't figure out how to fix it:
#include <stdio.h>
int main(){
int e;
char name[] = "";
printf("Enter a name : \n");
scanf("%c",&name);
for(int i = 0; i < (sizeof(name)/sizeof(char)); i++){
e = name[i];
printf("The ASCII value of the letter %c is : %d \n",name[i],e);
}
int n = (sizeof(name)/sizeof(char));
printf("%d", n);
}
Here's a corrected, annotated version:
#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
int main() {
int e;
char name[100] = ""; // Allow for up to 100 characters
printf("Enter a name : \n");
// scanf("%c", &name); // %c reads a single character
scanf("%99s", name); // Use %s to read a string! %99s to limit input size!
// for (int i = 0; i < (sizeof(name) / sizeof(char)); i++) { // sizeof(name) / sizeof(char) is a fixed value!
size_t len = strlen(name); // Use this library function to get string length
for (size_t i = 0; i < len; i++) { // Saves calculating each time!
e = name[i];
printf("The ASCII value of the letter %c is : %d \n", name[i], e);
}
printf("\n Name length = %zu\n", strlen(name)); // Given length!
int n = (sizeof(name) / sizeof(char)); // As noted above, this will be ...
printf("%d", n); // ... a fixed value (100, as it stands).
return 0; // ALWAYS return an integer from main!
}
But also read the comments given in your question!
This is a rather long answer, feel free to skip to the end for the code example.
First of all, by initialising a char array with unspecified length, you are making that array have length 1 (it only contains the empty string). The key issue here is that arrays in C are fixed size, so name will not grow larger.
Second, the format specifier %c causes scanf to only ever read one byte. This means that even if you had made a larger array, you would only be reading one byte to it anyway.
The parameter you're giving to scanf is erroneous, but accidentally works - you're passing a pointer to an array when it expects a pointer to char. It works because the pointer to the array points at the first element of the array. Luckily this is an easy fix, an array of a type can be passed to a function expecting a pointer to that type - it is said to "decay" to a pointer. So you could just pass name instead.
As a result of these two actions, you now have a situation where name is of length 1, and you have read exactly one byte into it. The next issue is sizeof(name)/sizeof(char) - this will always equal 1 in your program. sizeof char is defined to always equal 1, so using it as a divisor causes no effect, and we already know sizeof name is equal to 1. This means your for loop will only ever read one byte from the array. For the exact same reason n is equal to 1. This is not erroneous per se, it's just probably not what you expected.
The solution to this can be done in a couple of ways, but I'll show one. First of all, you don't want to initialize name as you do, because it always creates an array of size 1. Instead you want to manually specify a larger size for the array, for instance 100 bytes (of which the last one will be dedicated to the terminating null byte).
char name[100];
/* You might want to zero out the array too by eg. using memset. It's not
necessary in this case, but arrays are allowed to contain anything unless
and until you replace their contents.
Parameters are target, byte to fill it with, and amount of bytes to fill */
memset(name, 0, sizeof(name));
Second, you don't necessarily want to use scanf at all if you're reading just a byte string from standard input instead of a more complex formatted string. You could eg. use fgets to read an entire line from standard input, though that also includes the newline character, which we'll have to strip.
/* The parameters are target to write to, bytes to write, and file to read from.
fgets writes a null terminator automatically after the string, so we will
read at most sizeof(name) - 1 bytes.
*/
fgets(name, sizeof(name), stdin);
Now you've read the name to memory. But the size of name the array hasn't changed, so if you used the rest of the code as is you would get a lot of messages saying The ASCII value of the letter is : 0. To get the meaningful length of the string, we'll use strlen.
NOTE: strlen is generally unsafe to use on arbitrary strings that might not be properly null-terminated as it will keep reading until it finds a zero byte, but we only get a portable bounds-checked version strnlen_s in C11. In this case we also know that the string is null-terminated, because fgets deals with that.
/* size_t is a large, unsigned integer type big enough to contain the
theoretical maximum size of an object, so size functions often return
size_t.
strlen counts the amount of bytes before the first null (0) byte */
size_t n = strlen(name);
Now that we have the length of the string, we can check if the last byte is the newline character, and remove it if so.
/* Assuming every line ends with a newline, we can simply zero out the last
byte if it's '\n' */
if (name[n - 1] == '\n') {
name[n - 1] = '\0';
/* The string is now 1 byte shorter, because we removed the newline.
We don't need to calculate strlen again, we can just do it manually. */
--n;
}
The loop looks quite similar, as it was mostly fine to begin with. Mostly, we want to avoid issues that can arise from comparing a signed int and an unsigned size_t, so we'll also make i be type size_t.
for (size_t i = 0; i < n; i++) {
int e = name[i];
printf("The ASCII value of the letter %c is : %d \n", name[i], e);
}
Putting it all together, we get
#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
int main() {
char name[100];
memset(name, 0, sizeof(name));
printf("Enter a name : \n");
fgets(name, sizeof(name), stdin);
size_t n = strlen(name);
if (n > 0 && name[n - 1] == '\n') {
name[n - 1] = '\0';
--n;
}
for (size_t i = 0; i < n; i++){
int e = name[i];
printf("The ASCII value of the letter %c is : %d \n", name[i], e);
}
/* To correctly print a size_t, use %zu */
printf("%zu\n", n);
/* In C99 main implicitly returns 0 if you don't add a return value
yourself, but it's a good habit to remember to return from functions. */
return 0;
}
Which should work pretty much as expected.
Additional notes:
This code should be valid C99, but I believe it's not valid C89. If you need to write to the older standard, there are several things you need to do differently. Fortunately, your compiler should warn you about those issues if you tell it which standard you want to use. C99 is probably the default these days, but older code still exists.
It's a bit inflexible to be reading strings into fixed-size buffers like this, so in a real situation you might want to have a way of dynamically increasing the size of the buffer as necessary. This will probably require you to use C's manual memory management functionality like malloc and realloc, which aren't particularly difficult but take greater care to avoid issues like memory leaks.
It's not guaranteed the strings you're reading are in any specific encoding, and C strings aren't really ideal for handling text that isn't encoded in a single-byte encoding. There is support for "wide character strings" but probably more often you'll be handling char strings containing UTF-8 where a single codepoint might be multiple bytes, and might not even represent an individual letter as such. In a more general-purpose program, you should keep this in mind.
If we need write a code to get ASCII values of all elements in a string, then we need to use "%d" instead of "%c". By doing this %d takes the corresponding ascii value of the following character.
If we need to only print the ascii value of each character in the string. Then this code will work:
#include <stdio.h>
char str[100];
int x;
int main(){
scanf("%s",str);
for(x=0;str[x]!='\0';x++){
printf("%d\n",str[x]);
}
}
To store all corresponding ASCII value of character in a new variable, we need to declare an integer variable and assign it to character. By this way the integer variable stores ascii value of character. The code is:
#include <stdio.h>
char str[100];
int x,ascii;
int main(){
scanf("%s",str);
for(x=0;str[x]!='\0';x++){
ascii=str[x];
printf("%d\n",ascii);
}
}
I hope this answer helped you.....😊
I have written this code where I want to add two integers, two doubles and concatenate two strings out of which one of the integer, double and the string is already declared and the other integer, string and double are to be taken by the user. But it seems that the program isn't taking another string as an input.
I have written a similar program where I can take the string from the user using scanf but the same isn't working here.
int main() {
int i = 4;
double d = 4.0;
char s[] = "My college name is ";
// Declare second integer, double, and String variables.
int i2,sum1;
double d2,sum2;
char s2[100];
// Read and save an integer, double, and String to your variables.
scanf("%d",&i2);
scanf("%lf",&d2);
scanf("%[^\n]%*c",&s2);
sum1= i+i2;
sum2= d+d2;
strcat(s,s2);
// Print the sum of both integer variables on a new line.
printf("%d\n",sum1);
printf("%.1lf\n",sum2);
printf("%s",s);
return 0;}
After I made the necessary changes like removing & from s2 and changing s[] to s[200], I still cannot get the concatenated string. I am writing my edited code. Kindly help me with that.
int main() {
int i = 4;
double d = 4.0;
char s[200] = "My college name is ";
// Declare second integer, double, and String variables.
int i2,sum1;
double d2,sum2;
char s2[100];
// Read and save an integer, double, and String to your variables.
scanf("%d",&i2);
scanf("%lf",&d2);
scanf("% [^\n]%*c",s2);
sum1= i+i2;
sum2= d+d2;
strcat(s,s2);
// Print the sum of both integer variables on a new line.
printf("%d\n",sum1);
printf("%.1lf\n",sum2);
printf("%s",s);
return 0;
}
Kindly help me with the bug here.
It's not taking your string input because you use %[^\n]%*c to scan the string. which instuct the program to return after geting a newline as input. And the string got a newline form the buffer after scanning d2, and return with out taking further input.
To get rid of this you need to input a char before taking the input of the string. Change the following lines:
scanf("%lf",&d2);
scanf("%[^\n]%*c",&s2);
To:
scanf("%lf",&d2);
getchar();
scanf("%[^\n]%*c",&s2);
And your code will take the string input properly.
Additionally, you can also do this (taking a extra character input befor string input) by putting a extra space before % sign.
Changing the following line:
scanf("%[^\n]%*c",&s2);
To:
scanf(" %[^\n]%*c",&s2);
Also do the same thing.
You are passing the wrong type of argument to scanf. s2 is an array of chars, so &s2 is a pointer to an array of chars, not a pointer to a char.
(You also ought to have bounds checking to prevent array overflows, add a newline to your final printf, etc. But eliminating the & will make your program compile and run)
Possibly your use of
scanf("%[^\n]%*c",&s2);
As far as I'm aware you can use
scanf("%[^\n]%*c",s2);
or
scanf("%[^\n]%*c",&s2[0]);
As the variable s2 is itself a pointer to the first memory address of the array, using &s2 is just a pointer to a pointer and has no allocated consecutive memory addresses to fill. Hope this helps.
Replace:
scanf("%[^\n]%*c",&s2);
With:
fgetc(stdin);
fgets(s2, 100,stdin);
After getting moderately comfortable with Java, i'm now trying to expand my horizon and try my hand at C programming. However, I cannot seem to wrap my head around the pointers in C, even with having visited multiple videos and websites.
The code below is supposed to take in two strings from the user, get the length of both of them and then compare the lengths against one another. The program should then return the longest of the two names (taking great care to return the length until newline, not the allocated size for the variable) by means of a pointer. So, when the user inputs 'Peterson'(name1) and 'Thisisareallylonglastname'(name2) the program should return 'Thisisareallylonglastname' by means of the pointer / name2 connection.
The problem I am having is that when trying to run the code (written in the Eclipse Neon C/C++ IDE, using the MinGW compiler) I get no output in the console. I am fairly certain I have set the path to my MinGW install correctly in windows, but to be sure I have also added the enviroment manually to the project. Between my confusion for pointers and generally being a crappy coder I am not sure what the (undoubtedly novice) mistake with my program is. I am not getting errors of any kind in the Neon IDE.
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>
int main(void)
{
/* Two variables that take family names' input from the user with a maximum length of 256 */
char name1[256];
char name2[256];
char *ch = NULL;
printf("When two people marry there can sometimes be a debate which last/family name will henceforth be used (as a hyphenated last name is not always feasible.");
printf("A simple way to avoid squabbles is to simply take the longest family name of the two (soon-to-be) partners.");
printf("This program will take your name inputs and compare their length against one another; it will then return the longest name to be put on the document.");
printf("Enter your last name for 1 :");
gets(name1);
printf("Enter your last name for 2 :");
gets(name2);
int size1 = strlen(name1);
printf("Length of name 1:");
printf(size1);
int size2 = strlen(name2);
printf("Length of name 2:");
printf(size2);
if (size1 > size2)
{
ch = &name1;
}
else
{
ch = &name2;
}
if(!ch)
{
printf("The largest family name found is:");
printf(*ch);
}
return(0);
}
One major problem is that your final output is under the condition if (!ch) - which, in English, reads "if the pointer ch is null-valued". Since it points to one of two (non-null) memory locations, this check will never pass.
If you change that to if (ch) (or just omit the check, since we know it's not null) and fix the printf problems pointed out by others in the comments, I think you'll get better results.
A pointer to char and an array of char are both ways of representing strings in C and as such are the same type. The main difference being that with the array the memory is allocated at compile time and with a pointer you either assign an array to it (like you're trying to do) or dynamically allocate the memory.
So when you're doing
ch = &name1;
What you're actually doing is trying to assign a pointer to the string name1 to ch, which isn't the same type and should throw up an error. Instead you really want to be doing
ch = name1;
Conversely, *ch is the same as ch[0] - you're accessing the first character of the string so to print it out you want to have
printf("%s",ch);
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>
int main(void)
{
/* Two variables that take family names' input from the user with a maximum length of 256 */
char name1[256];
char name2[256];
char *ch = NULL;
printf("When two people marry there can sometimes be a debate which last/family name will henceforth be used (as a hyphenated last name is not always feasible.");
printf("A simple way to avoid squabbles is to simply take the longest family name of the two (soon-to-be) partners.");
printf("This program will take your name inputs and compare their length against one another; it will then return the longest name to be put on the document.");
printf("Enter your last name for 1 :");
gets(name1);
printf("Enter your last name for 2 :");
gets(name2);
int size1 = strlen(name1);
printf("Length of name 1: %d", size1);
int size2 = strlen(name2);
printf("Length of name 2: %d", size2);
if (size1 > size2)
{
ch = name1;
}
else
{
ch = name2;
}
printf("The largest family name found is: %s", ch);
return(0);
}
This should do the trick. You should also use scanf("%s", str) instead of gets.
When you do char name1[256] name1 is "considered an pointer", so you must do ch = name1 not ch = &name1, because both ch and name1 are pointers.
when you did:
if(!ch)
{
printf...
}
you will only print if the ch is null, wich you don't want, because, in this case, you want to print if ch has a value so you should do:
if(ch)
{
printf...
}
also in c printf must receive the information about the variable you are trying to print, check printf examples to understand it
The main problem is that you're expecting printf to act as a polymorphic function like System.out.println, and it doesn't. The prototype for printf is
int printf( const char * restrict format, ... );
The first argument is always a character string; the string may contain conversion specifiers that control how any additional arguments are formatted.
So instead of writing:
printf("Length of name 1:");
printf(size1);
you'd write:
printf( "Length of name 1: %d\n", size1 );
or
printf( "Length of name 1: " );
printf( "%d\n", size1 );
The %d in the format string tells printf that the corresponding argument should have type int, and that you want to display its value as a string of decimal digits. See the online C 2011 standard, section 7.21.6.1, for the complete list of conversion specifiers.
printf doesn't automatically append a newline to all output the way System.out.println does - you have to specify it in the format string (\n).
Standard output is typically line buffered - output won't show up on the console until a) the buffer is full, b) the buffer is manually flushed with fflush, c) a newline appears in the buffer, or d) an input function (fgets, scanf, etc.) immediately follows the output function.
Array semantics in C and Java are wildly different. In C, arrays are not reference objects - they don't point to dynamically-allocated memory on the heap. However, the array subscript operation a[i] is defined in terms of pointer arithmetic - *(a + i). What happens in C is that when an array expression is not the operand of the sizeof or unary & operators, or isn't a string literal used to initialize an array in a declaration, the expression is converted ("decays") from type "N-element array of T" to "pointer to T", and the value of the expression is the address of the first element of the array.
This is a very long-winded way of saying that instead of writing
ch = &name1;
you should be writing
ch = name1;
instead. The expression name1 "decays" to a pointer to the first element of the array, and the resulting type of the expression is char *. The type of the expression &name1 is char (*)[256] (pointer to 256-element array of char), which is not what you want. They'll both evaluate to the same location (modulo any type conversions), but type matters.
Finally...
NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER use gets. It will introduce a point of failure / major security hole in your code. It was deprecrated shortly after the release of the C99 standard, and has been officially removed from the standard library in C2011. That one library function has been responsible for untold amounts of mayhem over the decades. Do not use it, not even in toy code. It is the "Highlander II" of the C programming language - it never existed. Use fgets instead.