Question

I am trying to take in array which contains some integer values/string values from the user, and not sure how long the array is going to be.. If i intitalise like array[500], i know it is a poor solution and poor programming skills.. How do i improve this?

Sample code below:

int main(void){
    int t=0;
    char str[200];
    int  count[20];
    printf("Please enter the number of test cases(between 1 to 20):");
    scanf("%d",&t);
    for ( int i = 1; i<=t;i++)
    {
        printf("Please enter each of %i test case values:",i);
        gets(str);
        //set_create(str);
        printf("\n");
    }
    for(int i = 0;i<t;i++)
    {
        prinf("%i",count[i]);
        printf("\n");
    } 
    return 0;
}

The code above is wrong definitely.. Need some help to improve the code…Thanks

Edited code:

 int main(void){
        int T=0;
        int *count; 
        printf("Please enter the number of test cases(between 1 to 20):");
        scanf("%d",&T);
        count = malloc(T * sizeof *count);
        for ( int i = 1; i<=T;i++)
        {
            printf("Please enter each of %i test case values:",i);
            fgets(count);
            printf("\n");
        }

        return 0;
    }

Answer 1

Just use a pointer and malloc / realloc memory as needed. Don’t use gets – it’s unsafe and no longer in the standard. Use fgets instead.

For example, if you don’t know how many count elements you need:

int *count;

scanf("%d", &t);
count = malloc(t * sizeof *count);