Validation using scanf() to protect against string - c

I have a code here that has a job to see if the user input is either string or integer from a range of 1-49. If I enter "asdas" it says invalid, and if I enter a integer from "1-49" it says valid. The problems I am having with this code is that if I enter "2 asda"
it will it count it has valid, and invalid at the same time, and if I enter "2 2" It will consider that valid as well. Just found out it also accepts "2d" as a valid input to.
for (i = 0; i < 6; i++)
{
printf("\nPlease enter the %d winning ticket numbers!: ", i+1);
if (scanf("%d", (&winningNumbers[i])) == 0 || (winningNumbers[i] <= 0) || (winningNumbers[i] >= 50))
{
inputFlush();
printf("\nInvalid Input. Please re-enter.\n") ;
i = i - 1;
}
}
for (i = 0; i < 6; i++)
{
printf("%d, ", winningNumbers[i]);
}

Read the entire line into a string (fgets, line 2 in the snippet). Read data from the string using sscanf: read the integer and one more character, after a space. Check whether sscanf returns something different than 1. If it does then you either have strings in the beginning (it returns 0 since it couldn't read an integer) or you have extra whitespace characters at the end (that is it also matched the %c format specifier). The space is needed to jump over whitespace until the end of the line (including the stored \n).
printf("\nPlease enter the %d winning ticket numbers!: ", i+1);
fgets(buffer, size, stdin);
if (sscanf(buffer, "%d %c", &winningNumbers[i], &c) != 1 || (winningNumbers[i] <= 0) || winningNumbers[i] >= 50))
{
// inputFlush(); not needed now that you read the entire line
printf("\nInvalid Input. Please re-enter.\n") ;
i = i - 1;
}

Look at this example.
#define MAX_LINE_SIZE 500
int main(int argc, char** argv)
{
char line[MAX_LINE_SIZE];
unsigned int num;
char *ptr;
while (fgets(line, MAX_LINE_SIZE, stdin) != NULL){
num = strtol(line, &ptr, 10);
if (line[0] != '\n' && (*ptr == '\n' || *ptr == '\0')) {
printf("Your num: %u\n", num); // check num if you need
} else {
printf("Error\n");
}
}
return 0;
}
The output:
12
Your num: 12
45
Your num: 45
34 2
Error
ads
Error
Here fgets function read data from stdin. strtol parse read string and assign an address of a char after parsed number to ptr pointer. Assuming that user has to input only one number (without any character after) we have to check whether *ptr is new line or end of line.
line[0] != '\n' prevents empty string.

Check the next character using peek, as detailed here. You can tell if it's good or not that way.
Another SO question that's pretty much the same.

Related

Wanted to check if the value entered is a number or else. "isdigit() is not working here as expected

I am stuck with a problem here in C. I am posting the question and the code I have written below. Here I have to enter 10 numbers in an array and then I need to check how many times a number appeared. But to verify that I have entered a number and not anything else, I have used "isdigit()" function. But this is of no use. Can anyone help me to solve it.
/*
(a) Ten numbers are entered from the keyboard into an array. The number to be searched is entered through the
keyboard by the user. Write a program to find if the number to be searched is present in the array and if it is present, display
the number of times it appears in the array.
*/
#include<stdio.h>
#include<ctype.h>
main()
{
int num[10];
int i, j, cnt=0;
char rept;
printf("Enter 10 numbers: \n\n");
for(i=0; i<=9; i++)
{
printf("Number %d = ", i+1);
scanf("%d", &num[i]);
fflush(stdin);
if ( !isdigit(num[i]) )
{
printf("OK\n");
}
else
{
printf("Invalid number. Enter again.\n");
i=i-1;
}
}
do
{
printf("\nEnter the number to be searched in array: ");
scanf(" %d", &j);
for (i=0 ; i<=24; i++)
{
if(num[i]==j)
cnt++;
}
if(cnt>0)
printf("\nNumber %d is present at %d places", j, cnt);
else
printf("\nNumber not present.");
printf("\n\nDo you want to search another number. Press Y to repeat. Any other key to exit");
fflush(stdin);
scanf("%c", &rept);
}while (rept=='y'||rept=='Y');
getch();
}
No you can't do that. isdigit() is supposed to work with characters and you passed a multigit integer variable.
What you can do is simply like this
if( scanf("%d",&a[i])== 1){
// you can be sure number is entered
}
And fflush(stdin) is undefined behavior.
So the use of scanf will be more prominent if you would do this
int clearstdin(){
int c;
while ((c = getchar()) != '\n' && c != EOF);
return (c == EOF);
}
In main()
int earlyend = 0;
for(size_t i=0; i<SIZE; i++){
...
...
int ret = scanf("%d",&a[i]);
while( ret == 0){
if( clearstdin() ){ /* EOF found */earlyend = 1; break; }
fprintf(stderr,"%s\n","Entered something wrong");
ret = scanf("%d",&a[i]);
}
if( earlyend ){ /*EOF found*/ }
if( ret == EOF) { /* Error occured */}
...
}
The %d conversion specifier will cause scanf to skip over any leading whitespace, then read a sequence of decimal digits, stopping at the first non-digit character. If there are no digit characters in the input (for example, you enter something like ”abc”), then nothing is read from the input stream, a[i] is not updated, and scanf will return 0 to indicate a matching failure.
So, you can do a test like
if ( scanf( “%d”, &a[i] ) == 1 )
{
// user entered valid input
}
But...
This doesn’t fully protect you from bad input. Suppose you enter something like ”123abc” - scanf will read, convert, and assign 123 and return a 1 indicating success, leaving ”abc” in the input stream to potentially foul up the next read.
Ideally, you’d like to reject the whole thing outright. Personally, I do this as follows:
char inbuf[SOME_SIZE]; // buffer to store input
if ( fgets( inbuf, sizeof inbuf, stdin ) ) // read input as text
{
char *chk; // use strtol to convert text to integer
int temp = (int) strtol( inbuf, &chk, 10 ); // first non-digit character written to chk
if ( isspace( *chk ) || *chk == 0 ) // if chk is whitespace or 0, input is valid
{
a[i] = temp;
}
else
{
// bad input
}
}
This still isn’t a 100% solution - it doesn’t make sure the user didn’t enter more characters than the buffer can hold, but it’s a step in the right direction.
Input validation in C is, frankly, a pain in the ass.

How to prevent user from entering more or less input than required in C?

I want the user to enter just two integers and not more than two or less than two. Also, upon invalid input, I wish to print an error and prompt the user to enter the two integers again. The user should enter two integers delimited by space and not a newline. Thus, for example:
1) Valid input is: 1 2
2) Invalid input: 1
3) Invalid input: 1 2 3
I have tried it with following two approaches:
#include<stdio.h>
int main(){
int first;
int second;
printf("Enter input:\n");
int returnValue = scanf("%d %d", &first, &second);
while(returnValue != 2){
printf("Invalid input. Please enter again: \n");
returnValue = scanf("%d %d", &first, &second);
}
printf("First: %d Second: %d\n", first, second);
return 0;
}
In this first approach involving scanf, I am unable to prevent the user from entering each integer on newline. Neither am I able to limit the input to just 2 numbers. That is, if the user inputs more than 2 integers, then program is accepting first 2 integers and ignoring third. I want to print error in that case.
My other approach involves fgets and sscanf:
#include<stdio.h>
int main(){
int first;
int second;
printf("Enter input:\n");
char line[20];
fgets(line, sizeof(line), stdin);
int returnValue = sscanf(line, "%d %d", &first, &second);
while(returnValue != 2){
printf("Invalid input. Please enter again: \n");
fgets(line, sizeof(line), stdin);
returnValue = sscanf(line, "%d %d", &first, &second);
}
printf("First: %d Second: %d\n", first, second);
return 0;
}
In this approach, I am able to print error if the user hits enter after entering just one integer. But I am unable to limit the input to just 2 numbers. That is, if the user inputs more than 2 integers, then program is accepting first 2 integers and ignoring third. I want to print error in that case.
So my question is, are my requirements achievable by modifying first approach as well as second approach?
Thanks.
One solution would be to use the %n conversion specification after the two %d conversions. The %n conversion specification does not match any characters, but stores the number of characters read to this point in the format string. So, in the call:
sscanf(line, "%d %d %n", &first, &second, &bufPos);
if the second %d is reached, then bufPos will hold the index of the character after the last character read in line. Since there is a space before the %n, zero or more white-space characters will be read and skipped over before the index value is stored in bufPos. Thus, after a valid entry, bufPos will indicate the \0 terminator. If any other character is found in line at this index, there were extraneous characters in the input.
Here is a modified version of your second code example. After fgets() reads a line of input, sscanf() is used to scan the string. If fewer than 2 matches are made, or if line[bufPos] is not '\0', then badInput is set to true. The input loop is a do loop that executes once, and continues to execute so long as badInput is true.
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h> // for exit()
#include <stdbool.h> // for bool type
#define BUF_SIZE 100
int main(void)
{
int first;
int second;
char line[BUF_SIZE];
int returnValue;
int bufPos;
bool badInput = false;
do {
if (badInput) {
printf("Invalid input. Please enter again: ");
badInput = false;
} else {
printf("Enter input: ");
}
if (fgets(line, sizeof(line), stdin) == NULL) {
perror("Error in fgets()");
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
returnValue = sscanf(line, "%d %d %n", &first, &second, &bufPos);
if (returnValue < 2 || line[bufPos] != '\0') {
badInput = true;
}
} while (badInput);
printf("First: %d Second: %d\n", first, second);
return 0;
}
Sample interaction:
Enter input: 1
Invalid input. Please enter again: 1 2 3
Invalid input. Please enter again:
Invalid input. Please enter again: 1 2
First: 1 Second: 2
To prevent issues when asking for char * you can use the regular expression.
If you are not forced to get two in one scanfyou could use this function:
int secure_input(int max, int min) {
int choice,buffer;
do {
choice = -1;//initialize in a values not included among min and max
scanf("%d", &choice);
while ((buffer = getchar()) != '\n' ? buffer != EOF : false); // empty the buffer to avoid infinite loop
} while (choice > max ? true : choice < min);
return choice;
}
In your main function you just to call the function like that:
first = secure_input(2;1);
Different from other answers, you could also parse the input using strtok(), then checking how many numbers were found. This approach is complicated, but it does offer a different outlook on the problem.
Inside your while() loop, you can check how many spaced numbers were found from fgets(), then if only 2 were found, then you can break out of the loop. Otherwise, keep searching. Once out of the loop, then you can just sscanf() two integers from the most recent input read. You can also use strtol() to check if integers are valid.
Note: strtok() is reeantrant, and it does modify the string that it parses. So in this case, you might need to create a copy of it somewhere. You can use strdup() or malloc() to do this.
Here is some example code that shows this:
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>
#define LINESIZE 20
#define BASE 10
int main(void) {
char line[LINESIZE];
const int n = LINESIZE;
char *number, *copy, *endptr;
const char *delim = " ";
int first, second, check, invalidnum;
size_t slen, count;
while (1) {
printf("Enter input: ");
if (fgets(line, n, stdin) == NULL) {
printf("Error reading buffer from fgets()\n");
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
slen = strlen(line);
if (slen > 0 && line[slen-1] == '\n') {
line[slen-1] = '\0';
} else {
printf("Buffer overflow detected\n");
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
copy = strdup(line);
count = 0;
invalidnum = 0;
number = strtok(copy, delim);
while (number != NULL) {
check = strtol(number, &endptr, BASE);
if (endptr == number || check == 0) {
invalidnum = 1;
break;
}
count++;
number = strtok(NULL, delim);
}
free(copy);
copy = NULL;
if (count != 2 || invalidnum) {
printf("Invalid input\n\n");
} else {
break;
}
}
if (sscanf(line, "%d %d", &first, &second) != 2) {
printf("Unexpected error from sscanf()\n");
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
printf("first = %d, second = %d\n", first, second);
return 0;
}
This is just another approach to your problem. In terms of simplicity, #David Bowling has the better idea, and I would suggest using his.

Difficulty using scanf for input

Can someone help me to solve my problem? I have a problem with %[^\n]. When I try to enter a false input the program loop the warning that I wrote, but if I use %s and I enter my string the next statement is not working properly.
#pragma warning (disable:4996)
#include<stdio.h>
#include<string.h>
#include<stdlib.h>
int main(){
char name[30];
char number[12];
int flag, flag1, flag2, flag3;
int i;
printf("Add New Contact\n");
do {
printf("input name [1..30 char]: ");
scanf("%[^\n]", name); fflush(stdin);
if ((name[0] >= 'A' && name[0] <= 'Z') || (name[0] >= 'a' && name[0] <= 'z')) {
flag = 1;
}
else {
flag = 0;
printf("First letter of name should be an alphabet (A-Z or a-z)\n");
}
if (strlen(name) > 30) {
flag1 = 0;
printf("Length of name should be between 1 and 30 characters\n");
}
else {
flag1 = 1;
}
} while (flag == 0 || flag1 == 0);
do {
printf("Input phone number[6..12 digits]: ");
scanf("%s", number); fflush(stdin);
for (i = 0; i < strlen(number); i++) {
if (number[i] >= '0' && number[i] <= '9') {
flag2 = 1;
}
else {
flag2 = 0;
}
}
if (flag2 == 0) {
printf("Phone numbers should only contain digits (0-9)\n");
}
if (strlen(number) >= 6 && strlen(number) <= 12) {
flag3 = 1;
}
else {
flag3 = 0;
printf("Length of phone numbers should be between 6 and 12 digits\n");
}
} while (flag2 == 0 || flag3 == 0);
printf("\n");
printf("New contact successfully added!\n");
printf("Press Enter to continue...");
getchar();
getchar();
return 0;
}
Oh by the way, the problem might simply be that the scanf call leaves the newline in the buffer, and if you loop and try again the first character seen will be the newline and scanf should not read any thing.
There are two things you should do: First check what scanf returns, it should return 1 if it read a string. Secondly you should tell scanf to discard any possible leading white-space by adding a space first in the format string: " %[^\n]".
Most scanf formats automatically skips leading white-space, but not when using the "%[" or "%c" formats.
Also, to not worry about writing out of bounds of the array, you should add a length modifier to make sure that scanf doesn't read more input than it can write: " %29[^\n]". If the length of the string is 29 after this, then you should probably read until you reach the end of the line, character by character.
Here is your program fixed:
#include <stdio.h>
#include <ctype.h>
#include <string.h>
// In case you need this -- not needed for this case
void discard_input()
{
char c;
while( ( c = getchar() ) != '\n' && c != EOF );
}
void remove_trailing_newline(char * s)
{
char * ch = s + strlen( s ) - 1;
while( ch != s ) {
if ( *ch == '\n' ) {
*ch = 0;
break;
}
--ch;
}
return;
}
int main(){
char name[30];
char number[12];
int flag, flag1, flag2, flag3;
int i;
printf("Add New Contact\n");
do {
printf("\nInput name [1..30 char]: ");
fgets( name, 30, stdin );
remove_trailing_newline( name );
flag1 = flag = 1;
if ( !isalpha( name[ 0 ] ) ) {
flag = 0;
printf("First letter of name should be an alphabet (A-Z or a-z), found: %s\n", name );
}
// impossible
if (strlen(name) > 30) {
flag1 = 0;
printf("Length of name should be between 1 and 30 characters\n");
}
} while (flag == 0 || flag1 == 0);
do {
printf("\nInput phone number[6..12 digits]: ");
fgets( number, 12, stdin );
remove_trailing_newline( number );
flag2 = flag3 = 1;
int len_phone = strlen( number );
for (i = 0; i < strlen(number); i++) {
if ( !isdigit( number[ i ] ) ) {
flag2 = 0;
}
}
if (flag2 == 0) {
printf("Phone numbers should only contain digits (0-9), found:'%s'\n", number);
}
if ( len_phone < 6 || len_phone > 12) {
flag3 = 0;
printf("Length of phone numbers should be between 6 and 12 digits, found: %d\n", len_phone );
}
} while (flag2 == 0 || flag3 == 0);
printf("\n");
printf( "Name: '%s'\n", name );
printf( "Phone: '%s'\n", number );
printf("New contact successfully added!\n");
printf("Press Enter to continue...");
getchar();
return 0;
}
You can find the program here.
The fixings are more or less interesting, I enumerate they here:
At first, I thought that the problem was that the trailing new line was being left in the input buffer. fflush(stdin) is actually undefined behaviour in C, since the fflush() function is there for output streams. Anyway, I included the code in question 12.26b of the comp.lang.c FAQ, since I think it is interesing to have it as reference. Then, I decided to change scanf() with fgets(). This is due to the scanf() taking spaces as delimiters, so you wouldn't be able to write a complete name, i.e., name and surname. Remember that gets() is not an option, since it writes the input past the limit of the buffer. Actually, fgets() solves this by letting us define a limit of chars to read. The problem is that fgets() also includes the '\n' in the buffer, so, that's why I included the remove_trailing_newline() function. Tricky, isn't it?
You added a condition to check whether the name input had more than thirty chars. Actually, this is impossible to check in your program. First of all, fgets() will read 29 chars + the final char mark (0). Secondly, if you were actually allowing to input more than 30 chars, then the input would be written past the size of the buffer, which is undefined behaviour (crashes in most cases). You would have to use something more complex, like std::string in C++, and then check its length. Or maybe use a third party expandable string for C. Or roll out your own expandable string...
You can decide whether there is an alphabetic char or a digit by using isalpha(c) and isdigit(c) functions.
When you are going to use a value many times, such as strlen(name), then you should precompute it and store it in a local variable. Though a good compiler (its optimizer) will detect this situation and solve it for you, you never know which compiler is going to compile your code, and how advanced it is. Also, there is nothing wrong making things easier for the optimizer.
When you have a situation in which you set a flag for signaling an error condition, it is easier to set it to the "no error" value before checking anything, and solely in case of an error, set it to the "error" value. This will be easier to read, and therefore, to understand.
Hope this helps.

Numeric input validation in C

I am doing a lab for an intro programming class
I have to make sure that an integer is entered. I thought this would do it but when I put in a letter it repeats in an endless loop.
I found this solution in another post
int num;
char term;
if (scanf("%d%c", &num, &term) != 2 || term != '\n')
printf("failure\n");
else
printf("valid integer followed by enter key\n");
But im not sure what I did wrong. Why is it not working in my code?
#include <stdio.h>
int main(void)
{
int oneVar;
char term;
double numOne;
double numTwo;
double sum;
double dif;
double quo;
double mult;
int checker = 1;
do
{
printf("Please choose one of the following:\n""1) Add\n""2) Subtract\n""3) Divide\n""4) Multiply\n""5) Quit\n");
if (scanf("%d%c" , &oneVar ,&term) != 2 || term != '\n')
{
printf ("This is not valid input\n\n");
checker = 1;
}
else if (oneVar == 5)
{
printf("Thank you. Goodbye.\n");
checker = 0;
}
else if (oneVar != 1 && oneVar !=2 && oneVar != 3 && oneVar != 4)
{
printf("This is not a valid input\n\n");
checker = 1;
}
else
{
printf("Please enter the first number:\n");
if (scanf("%lf%c" , &numOne ,&term) != 2 || term != '\n')
{
printf ("This is not valid input\n\n");
checker = 1;
}
printf("Please enter the second number:\n");
if (scanf("%lf%c" , &numTwo ,&term) != 2 || term != '\n')
{
printf ("This is not valid input\n\n");
checker = 1;
}
else if (oneVar == 1)
{
sum = numOne + numTwo;
printf("The sum is: %.2lf\n" ,sum);
checker = 0;
}
else if (oneVar == 2)
{
dif = numOne - numTwo;
printf("The difference is: %.2lf\n" ,dif);
checker = 0;
}
else if (oneVar == 3)
{
quo = numOne / numTwo;
printf("The quotient is: %.2lf\n" ,quo);
checker = 0;
}
else if (oneVar == 4)
{
mult = numOne * numTwo;
printf("The product is: %.2lf\n" ,mult);
checker = 0;
}
else if (oneVar == 5)
{
printf("Thank you. Goodbye.\n");
checker = 0;
}
}
} while (checker == 1);
return(0);
}
My prof posted this Im not sure how it helps but I thought it might help someone
To make sure that a user-input number is an integer you can use the notion of casting. Casting is a way to tell C to treat a variable as if it were a variable of a different type.
so, if I have something like this:
double myDouble;
myDouble = 5.43;
printf ("%d", (int) myDouble);
It will tell C to print myDouble, but to treat it like an integer. Only the 5 will be printed and you won't get any type mismatch errors. You can use casting to check to see if an input number is an integer by comparing the input to the (int) cast of the number. Something like this should work:
if(inputNum == (int) inputNum)
You'll still get 1.0 and 2.0 passing as valid numbers, but that is ok for now.
Why complicate things?
char x = 0;
scanf("%c", &x);
if (x >= 0x41 && x <= 0x7A)
printf("you entered a letter");
In ASCII table, letters have values between 0x41 ("A") and 0x7A ("z").
So, you just need to check the ASCII value of the input. :)
Using the %c to "consume" the end of line is not a good solution. If the user enters say:
123 abc<newline>
num will be 123, but term will be the space character. If you enter a letter rather than a number, the scan will stop without consuming any of the characters, the next input call will return due to the already buffered line, and may still consume nothing. Your program loops continuously because every input statement is failing to consume the newline and returns immediately. The standard input functions wait for a complete line before returning, if the line is not read completely, input functions do not need to wait.
There are a number of solutions, many of which such as the one you used are flawed, the method below, forces the input buffer to be flushed up to and including the newline.
int check = scanf( "%d", &num ) ;
while( getchar() != '\n' )
{
// do nothing
}
if( check != 2 )
printf("failure\n");
else
printf("valid integer followed by enter key\n");
If you use the %c format specifier at the end of the input, then a slightly different flush is necessary since the character input may be a newline:
int check = scanf( "%c", &ch ) ;
while( ch != '\n' && getchar() != '\n' )
{
// do nothing
}

Putting numbers separated by a space into an array

I want to have a user enter numbers separated by a space and then store each value as an element of an array. Currently I have:
while ((c = getchar()) != '\n')
{
if (c != ' ')
arr[i++] = c - '0';
}
but, of course, this stores one digit per element.
If the user was to type:
10 567 92 3
I was wanting the value 10 to be stored in arr[0], and then 567 in arr[1] etc.
Should I be using scanf instead somehow?
There are several approaches, depending on how robust you want the code to be.
The most straightforward is to use scanf with the %d conversion specifier:
while (scanf("%d", &a[i++]) == 1)
/* empty loop */ ;
The %d conversion specifier tells scanf to skip over any leading whitespace and read up to the next non-digit character. The return value is the number of successful conversions and assignments. Since we're reading a single integer value, the return value should be 1 on success.
As written, this has a number of pitfalls. First, suppose your user enters more numbers than your array is sized to hold; if you're lucky you'll get an access violation immediately. If you're not, you'll wind up clobbering something important that will cause problems later (buffer overflows are a common malware exploit).
So you at least want to add code to make sure you don't go past the end of your array:
while (i < ARRAY_SIZE && scanf("%d", &a[i++]) == 1)
/* empty loop */;
Good so far. But now suppose your user fatfingers a non-numeric character in their input, like 12 3r5 67. As written, the loop will assign 12 to a[0], 3 to a[1], then it will see the r in the input stream, return 0 and exit without saving anything to a[2]. Here's where a subtle bug creeps in -- even though nothing gets assigned to a[2], the expression i++ still gets evaluated, so you'll think you assigned something to a[2] even though it contains a garbage value. So you might want to hold off on incrementing i until you know you had a successful read:
while (i < ARRAY_SIZE && scanf("%d", &a[i]) == 1)
i++;
Ideally, you'd like to reject 3r5 altogether. We can read the character immediately following the number and make sure it's whitespace; if it's not, we reject the input:
#include <ctype.h>
...
int tmp;
char follow;
int count;
...
while (i < ARRAY_SIZE && (count = scanf("%d%c", &tmp, &follow)) > 0)
{
if (count == 2 && isspace(follow) || count == 1)
{
a[i++] = tmp;
}
else
{
printf ("Bad character detected: %c\n", follow);
break;
}
}
If we get two successful conversions, we make sure follow is a whitespace character - if it isn't, we print an error and exit the loop. If we get 1 successful conversion, that means there were no characters following the input number (meaning we hit EOF after the numeric input).
Alternately, we can read each input value as text and use strtol to do the conversion, which also allows you to catch the same kind of problem (my preferred method):
#include <ctype.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
...
char buf[INT_DIGITS + 3]; // account for sign character, newline, and 0 terminator
...
while(i < ARRAY_SIZE && fgets(buf, sizeof buf, stdin) != NULL)
{
char *follow; // note that follow is a pointer to char in this case
int val = (int) strtol(buf, &follow, 10);
if (isspace(*follow) || *follow == 0)
{
a[i++] = val;
}
else
{
printf("%s is not a valid integer string; exiting...\n", buf);
break;
}
}
BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE!
Suppose your user is one of those twisted QA types who likes to throw obnoxious input at your code "just to see what happens" and enters a number like 123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890 which is obviously too large to fit into any of the standard integer types. Believe it or not, scanf("%d", &val) will not yak on this, and will wind up storing something to val, but again it's an input you'd probably like to reject outright.
If you only allow one value per line, this becomes relatively easy to guard against; fgets will store a newline character in the target buffer if there's room, so if we don't see a newline character in the input buffer then the user typed something that's longer than we're prepared to handle:
#include <string.h>
...
while (i < ARRAY_SIZE && fgets(buf, sizeof buf, stdin) != NULL)
{
char *newline = strchr(buf, '\n');
if (!newline)
{
printf("Input value too long\n");
/**
* Read until we see a newline or EOF to clear out the input stream
*/
while (!newline && fgets(buf, sizeof buf, stdin) != NULL)
newline = strchr(buf, '\n');
break;
}
...
}
If you want to allow multiple values per line such as '10 20 30', then this gets a bit harder. We could go back to reading individual characters from the input, and doing a sanity check on each (warning, untested):
...
while (i < ARRAY_SIZE)
{
size_t j = 0;
int c;
while (j < sizeof buf - 1 && (c = getchar()) != EOF) && isdigit(c))
buf[j++] = c;
buf[j] = 0;
if (isdigit(c))
{
printf("Input too long to handle\n");
while ((c = getchar()) != EOF && c != '\n') // clear out input stream
/* empty loop */ ;
break;
}
else if (!isspace(c))
{
if (isgraph(c)
printf("Non-digit character %c seen in numeric input\n", c);
else
printf("Non-digit character %o seen in numeric input\n", c);
while ((c = getchar()) != EOF && c != '\n') // clear out input stream
/* empty loop */ ;
break;
}
else
a[i++] = (int) strtol(buffer, NULL, 10); // no need for follow pointer,
// since we've already checked
// for non-digit characters.
}
Welcome to the wonderfully whacked-up world of interactive input in C.
Small change to your code: only increment i when you read the space:
while ((c = getchar()) != '\n')
{
if (c != ' ')
arr[i] = arr[i] * 10 + c - '0';
else
i++;
}
Of course, it's better to use scanf:
while (scanf("%d", &a[i++]) == 1);
providing that you have enough space in the array. Also, be careful that the while above ends with ;, everything is done inside the loop condition.
As a matter of fact, every return value should be checked.
scanf returns the number of items successfully scanned.
Give this code a try:
#include <stdio.h>
int main()
{
int arr[500];
int i = 0;
int sc = 0; //scanned items
int n = 3; // no of integers to be scanned from the single line in stdin
while( sc<n )
{
sc += scanf("%d",&arr[i++]);
}
}

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