Question

I want to input a string or number from the keyboard and then display it. How do I do it?
This is what I have, gives me all sorts of errors, but nevermind my code, it’s just an example. I want to know what the right way to do it is.

Please provide with some code as an example and maybe some links I can further document from.

#include "stdafx.h"
#include <windows.h>
#include <conio.h>

int _tmain(int argc, _TCHAR* argv[])
{
    LPSTR test;

    scanf("%s", &test);
    printf("%s", &test);
    //_getch();
    return 0;
}

Answer 1

scanf reads into a preallocated buffer. It is unsafe with respect to to buffer overflows unless you specify a field width, e.g. "%50s".

Likewise, printf( "%s", str ) takes a pointer to the first character of the string for str.

You are passing a pointer to pointer, so I presume you expect the functions to do memory management for you. scanf will never call malloc.

char testbuf[ 51 ]; // allocate space for 50 characters + termination
LPSTR test = testbuf;

scanf("%50s", test); // read at most 50 characters
printf("%s", test);
//_getch();
return 0;