Question

I wrote a function that reads an unknown length string until Enter is pressed and returns a char pointer. When I call the function from inside a switch case, it does not wait for my input.

char *get_paths()
{
    unsigned int length_max = 256; /*Initial length of string*/
    unsigned int current_size; 
    current_size = length_max;

    /* Allocating memory for string input */
    char *tmpStr = malloc(length_max);

    /* Simple check to make sure our pointer is not NULL */
    if(tmpStr != NULL)
    {
        int c = EOF; 
        unsigned int i = 0;

        printf("Enter The EXACT or RELATIVE File Paths Separated by a Space: ");

        /* Accept input until Enter key is pressed or user inserts EOF */
        while((c = getchar()) != '\n' && c != EOF)
        {
            tmpStr[i] = (char)c;
            ++i;

            /* If memory is filled up, reallocate memory with bigger size */
            if(i == current_size)
            {
                current_size = i + length_max;
                /* realloc does magic */
                tmpStr = realloc(tmpStr, current_size); 
            }
        }

        /* A valid string always end with a '\0' */
        tmpStr[i] = '\0';
        printf("Got it: %s \n", tmpStr); /*TODO: REMOVE;; USED FOR TESTING*/
        return tmpStr; 
    }
}

The switch case (I have a char *ptr = NULL out of the switch block):

/*File input*/
case 1:
    ptr = get_filepaths();
break;

Output:

Enter The EXACT or RELATIVE File Paths Separated by a Space: Got it:

Answer 1

The solution I was able to find to ‘somehow’ get away with this issue was to add a getchar() right after the first printf() call. not sure why this works!