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I need help optimizing the code below, it's been a while since I coded in C and something has changed since then.

Write a program that asks for a name that compares to those that it has as elements of a character array and greets or announces that she is "stranger".

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>

int main(){
        char who[110];
        char names []="Sam John Tom Sophia Jane Mary ";
        printf("Enter a name: ");
        gets(who);
        char *ptr=strstr(names, who);
    
        printf("\n%s\n",who);
    
        if (ptr != NULL)
        {
            printf("We know '%s'\n", who);
            printf("Hello %s", who);
        }
        else
        {
            printf("We don`t know '%s'\n", who);
            printf("%s is a STRANGER!!", who);
        }
        return 0;
}
Dada
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VII
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1 Answers1

2

You can use standard function fgets. For example

fgets( who, sizeof( who ), stdin );
who[ strcspn( who, "\n" ) ] = '\0';

The function can append the new line character '\n' to the entered string that you need to remove before using the function strstr.

Alternatively you can use function scanf the following way

scanf( "%109[^\n]", s );

In this case the new line character '\n' will not be read in the character array.

if you need to enter only one word then you can use scanf like

scanf( "%109s", who );

As for your approach then in general it is incorrect. For example the user can enter the word "Jo" and the function strstr will return a non-null pointer.

It is better to use an array of pointers to string literals like

const char *names[] = { "Sam", "John", "Tom", "Sophia", "Jane", "Mary" };

and then in a loop to check whether the entered string coincides with a string literal in the array.

For example

const char *names[] = { "Sam", "John", "Tom", "Sophia", "Jane", "Mary" };
const size_t N = sizeof( names ) / sizeof( *names );

//...
size_t i = 0;

while ( i != N && strcmp( names[i], who ) != 0 ) i++;

if ( i != N )
{
    printf("We know '%s'\n", who);
    printf("Hello %s", who);
}
else
{
    printf("We don`t know '%s'\n", who);
    printf("%s is a STRANGER!!", who);
}
Vlad from Moscow
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