You want to input a string with spaces?

PublishedDecember 24, 2023

I am Jyotiprakash, a deeply driven computer systems engineer, software developer, teacher, and philosopher. With a decade of professional experience, I have contributed to various cutting-edge software products in network security, mobile apps, and healthcare software at renowned companies like Oracle, Yahoo, and Epic. My academic journey has taken me to prestigious institutions such as the University of Wisconsin-Madison and BITS Pilani in India, where I consistently ranked among the top of my class.

At my core, I am a computer enthusiast with a profound interest in understanding the intricacies of computer programming. My skills are not limited to application programming in Java; I have also delved deeply into computer hardware, learning about various architectures, low-level assembly programming, Linux kernel implementation, and writing device drivers. The contributions of Linus Torvalds, Ken Thompson, and Dennis Ritchie—who revolutionized the computer industry—inspire me. I believe that real contributions to computer science are made by mastering all levels of abstraction and understanding systems inside out.

In addition to my professional pursuits, I am passionate about teaching and sharing knowledge. I have spent two years as a teaching assistant at UW Madison, where I taught complex concepts in operating systems, computer graphics, and data structures to both graduate and undergraduate students. Currently, I am an assistant professor at KIIT, Bhubaneswar, where I continue to teach computer science to undergraduate and graduate students. I am also working on writing a few free books on systems programming, as I believe in freely sharing knowledge to empower others.

Comments

Join the discussion

No comments yet. Be the first to comment.

More from this blog

Why Energy and Momentum Are Conserved: Noether's Theorem, Derived by Hand

Two conservation laws, derived from scratch with first-year calculus, then measured to check.

Aug 10, 202630 min read

Socket Programming in Java: Understanding TCP Communication

Socket programming forms the backbone of network communication in modern applications. Whether you're building a web service, a chat application, or a distributed system, understanding how to work wit

Aug 6, 202626 min read

Computer Arithmetic: From Fast Adders to Floating-Point

Arithmetic is the beating heart of every processor. Whether your machine is rendering 3-D graphics, training a neural network, or simply incrementing a loop counter, the ALU (Arithmetic Logic Unit) is doing the heavy lifting. In this deep-dive, I wan...

Feb 12, 202629 min read

The Complete Memory Hierarchy: From Semiconductor RAM to Virtual Memory

The performance gap between processors and main memory has been widening for decades. Modern processors can execute billions of instructions per second, but accessing data from main memory takes hundreds of processor cycles. This disparity creates a ...

Jan 7, 202670 min read

The Ultimate Spring Boot Guide: From Fundamentals to Production-Ready REST APIs

Introduction Welcome to the most comprehensive Spring Boot guide you'll find! This isn't just another tutorial that skims the surface. We're going to dive deep into every concept, explain every annotation, walk through every line of code, and underst...

Dec 26, 2025125 min read

Jyotiprakash's Blog

253 posts

I'm Jyotiprakash, a software dev and professor at KIIT, with expertise in system programming.

When you want to read a string that may contain spaces from the console in C, using scanf alone may not be sufficient because scanf stops reading when it encounters a space character. Here are a few alternative approaches to read a string with spaces:

1. Using `fgets`:

#include <stdio.h>

int main() {
    char buffer[100];  // Adjust the size according to your needs

    printf("Enter a string with spaces: ");
    fgets(buffer, sizeof(buffer), stdin);

    // Remove trailing newline character if present
    int length = strlen(buffer);
    if (length > 0 && buffer[length - 1] == '\n') {
        buffer[length - 1] = '\0';
    }

    printf("You entered: %s\n", buffer);

    return 0;
}

fgets reads a line from the specified stream (in this case, stdin) and stores it in the provided buffer.

2. Using `scanf` with the `%[^\n]` format specifier:

#include <stdio.h>

int main() {
    char buffer[100];  // Adjust the size according to your needs

    printf("Enter a string with spaces: ");
    scanf(" %[^\n]", buffer);

    printf("You entered: %s\n", buffer);

    return 0;
}

The %[^\n] format specifier in scanf tells it to read characters until a newline is encountered.

3. Using `getchar` in a loop:

#include <stdio.h>

int main() {
    char buffer[100];  // Adjust the size according to your needs

    printf("Enter a string with spaces: ");

    int i = 0;
    int c;
    while ((c = getchar()) != '\n' && i < sizeof(buffer) - 1) {
        buffer[i++] = c;
    }
    buffer[i] = '\0';

    printf("You entered: %s\n", buffer);

    return 0;
}

This approach reads characters one by one until a newline is encountered.

Choose the method that best fits your requirements and coding style. Adjust buffer sizes as needed for your specific use case.

Command Palette

Comments

More from this blog

1. Using fgets:

2. Using scanf with the %[^\n] format specifier:

3. Using getchar in a loop:

1. Using `fgets`:

2. Using `scanf` with the `%[^\n]` format specifier:

3. Using `getchar` in a loop: