Question

I’m trying to create an array of a struct, which I have done and I have to receive an input from the user. The first piece of data would be the description (a string). I have to allocate memory for it as well. I’m not how big the string is going to be to I want to check as it’s going in, but I don’t think I’ve set it up right. Can anyone give me a hint or a page I can look at to figure it out?

Greatly appreciated. Here are the important snipits of code:

struct myExpenses
{
    char *description;
    float cost;
};


int main (void)
{


struct myExpenses *pData = NULL;
struct myExpenses expenses[60];
int exit=0;
int i = 0;
char buffer[81] = "";


printf("Please enter all your descriptions:\n");
for (i=0;i < 60; i++)
{
    fgets(buffer,stdin);
    expenses[i].description=(char *)malloc sizeof(buffer);

} 

Answer 1

Instead of using malloc() you could use strdup that would automatically allocate the right sized buffer for you.

expenses[i].description = strdup( buffer );