I am getting a _\377 in my output - c

Question

I have a school assignment to make a hangman game. The game works how I want it to except for one small glitch. If the user entered word is 4 letters or less, the hidden word is displayed with an extra "_\377" at the end. When the user entered word is 5 letters or more, then there is no glitch. I am hoping that someone would be kind enough to help me trouble shoot the problem. Thanks in advance!
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>
int letterfinder(char string[], char a, int vari)
{
int length = strlen(string);
int i = vari;
int val = 0;
while( i <= length && val != 1)
{
if( string[i] == a)
{
val = 1;
}
i++;
}
if( val == 0)
{
return 100;
}
else
{
return i;
}
}
int main()
{
char inWord[] = "1111111111111111111111111111";
char outWord2[] = "1111111111111111111111111111";
char guess;
int gameover = 0;
int trys = 10;
int vari = 0;
printf("Please enter a word: ");
gets(inWord);
printf("%s\n", inWord);
printf(" \n");
printf(" \n");
printf(" \n");
printf(" \n");
printf(" \n");
printf(" \n");
int i2 = 0;
int j2 = 0;
int i3 = 0;
i2 = strcspn(inWord, outWord2);
char outWord[80];
while(i3 < i2)
{
outWord[i3] = '1';
i3++;
}
while(j2 < i2)
{
outWord[j2] = '-';
j2++;
}
puts(outWord);
while(gameover != 1 )
{
printf("What is your guess: ");
scanf("%s", &guess);
vari = 0;
if(letterfinder(inWord, guess, vari) == 100)
{
printf("Wrong!");
trys--;
printf("You have %d attempts left\n", trys);
if(trys == 0)
{
gameover = 1;
printf("You ran out of attempts. Game over\n");
}
}
else
{
outWord[(letterfinder(inWord, guess, vari) - 1)] = guess;
vari = (letterfinder(inWord, guess, vari));
while(letterfinder(inWord, guess, vari) != 100)
{
outWord[(letterfinder(inWord, guess, vari) - 1)] = guess;
vari = letterfinder(inWord, guess, vari);
}
puts(outWord);
}
int value = 0;
i3 = 0;
while( i3 <= i2)
{
if( outWord[i3] == '-')
{
value = 1;
}
i3++;
}
if(value != 1)
{
printf("Congratulations, you have guessed the word!\n");
gameover = 1;
}
}
return 0;
}

Answer 1

Your code has Undefined Behaviour. In the cases it "works" it is only by chance/luck. char guess; scanf("%s", &guess); That causes memory corruption as you are writing a string to a variable that can only hold a single char. Even a single letter guess will require two characters to store as all C strings are NUL terminated.
– kaylum