how to display entered letter in c? - c

Question

I am new to c programming. I have created a program for entered letters and finally displayed the entered letters.. but it displayed only final letters always.. please help .. i know its simple question but am beginner so please help guys..
#include<stdio.h>
int main()
{
char z;
int a;
printf("enter the no.");
scanf("%d",&a);
printf("the entered no. is:%d\n",a);
int i;
for(i=0;i<a;i++)
{
printf("enter the letters:");
scanf("%s",&z);
}
printf("the entered letters are:");
for(i=0;i<a;i++)
{
printf("%s\n",&z);
}
return 0;
}

Answer 1

Problems:
You should use %c (for character) instead of %s (for string).
Use a character array for storing multiple characters. Read about arrays here.
Remove & from printf() in the second for loop.
Try this:
int main()
{
char z[10]; //can hold 10 characters like z[0],z[1],z[2],..
int a;
printf("enter the no.");
scanf("%d",&a);
printf("the entered no. is:%d\n",a);
int i;
for(i=0;i<a;i++)
{
printf("enter the letters:");
scanf("%c",&z[i]);
}
printf("the entered letters are:");
for(i=0;i<a;i++)
{
printf("%c\n",z[i]);
}
return 0;
}

Answer 2

Please look into this for more details on scanf. You have given scanf("%s",&z); %s is for reading strings(array of chars except newline char and ended with null char). So if you put this inside loop you wont get desired result. And if you want read only a char at a time use %c here c for Character.
for(i=0;i<a;i++)
{
printf("enter the letters:");
scanf("%c",z+i);
}

Answer 3

char z is a place holder for one character only. And you are over writing what you set z to in the for loop. To take in more characters, use a char array as others have mentioned.
Or print the characters in the same you loop you are scanning them:
#include<stdio.h>
int main()
{
char z;
int a;
printf("enter the no.");
scanf("%d",&a);
printf("the entered no. is:%d\n",a);
int i;
for(i=0;i<a;i++)
{
printf("enter the letters:");
scanf("%s",&z);
printf("letter scanned:%c\n", z);
}
return 0;
}

Answer 4

Letters are scanned using %c. And to scan multiple letters you can use char array: char z[10];
What you are trying to do can be done this way:
char z[10]; // Take some max size array
...
for(i=0;i<a;i++)
{
printf("enter the letters:");
scanf("%c",&z[i]); // Scan the letters on each array position.
}
printf("the entered letters are:");
for(i=0;i<a;i++)
{
printf("%c\n",z[i]); //'printf' doesn't require address of arg as argument hence no `&` required
}
%s argument is used to scan a string of chars.
Note the difference between string of chars and array of chars. The string of chars in C needs to be terminated with ASCII Character 0 represented as \0 in char format, while the array of char is just a collection of letters which need not be terminated with \0.
The difference becomes more important when you try to perform some operation on strings such as printf, strcpy, strlen, etc.. These functions work on null character termination property of string.
For Example: strlen counts the characters in the string till it finds \0, to find out the length of string. Similarly, printf prints the string character by character until it finds the \0 character.
UPDATE:
Forgot to mention that scanf is not a good option to input char format. Use fgetc instead, with stdin as input FILE stream.

Answer 5

#include <stdio.h>
int main()
{
char *z;
int a;
printf("enter the no.");
scanf("%d",&a);
z = (char *) malloc(a);
printf("the entered no. is:%d\n",a);
int i;
for(i=0;i<a;i++)
{
printf("enter the letters:");
scanf("%c",z+i);
}
printf("the entered letters are:");
for(i=0;i<a;i++)
{
printf("%c\n",z);
}
return 0;
}

Answer 6

first error in your code is you have used "%s" instead of "%c".Second is it is impossible to store multiple values in one variable so instead of using variable use arrays.third is that you have told the user to enter the number of character that he/she wants to entered which you don't know.They can enter 1 also and 100000 also so the number of members in array is not defined.Better is to use specific number of characters in array.

Answer 7

finally i got the answer thank you for the help stackoverflow guys simply rocks ...
#include<stdio.h>
#include<malloc.h>
int main()
{
int a;
char *z=(char *)malloc(sizeof(a));
printf("enter the no.");
scanf("%d",&a);
printf("the entered no. is:%d\n",a);
int i;
for(i=0;i<a;i++)
{
printf("enter the letters:");
scanf("%s",&z[i]);
}
printf("the entered letters are:\n");
for(i=0;i<a;i++)
{
printf("%c\n",z[i]);
}
return 0;
}