How do I properly compare strings?

Question

I am trying to get a program to let a user enter a word or character, store it, and then print it until the user types it again, exiting the program. My code looks like this:

#include <stdio.h>

int main()
{
    char input[40];
    char check[40];
    int i=0;
    printf("Hello!\nPlease enter a word or character:\n");
    gets(input);
    printf("I will now repeat this until you type it back to me.\n");

    while (check != input)
    {
        printf("%s\n", input);
        gets(check); 
    }

    printf("Good bye!");


    return 0;
}

The problem is that I keep getting the printing of the input string, even when the input by the user (check) matches the original (input). Am I comparing the two incorrectly?

Answer 1

Use strcmp.

This is in string.h library, and is very popular. strcmp return 0 if the strings are equal. See this for an better explanation of what strcmp returns.

Basically, you have to do:

while (strcmp(check,input) != 0)

or

while (!strcmp(check,input))

or

while (strcmp(check,input))

You can check this, a tutorial on strcmp.

Answer 2

You can't compare arrays directly like this

array1==array2

You should compare them char-by-char; for this you can use a function and return a boolean (True:1, False:0) value. Then you can use it in the test condition of the while loop.

Try this:

#include <stdio.h>
int checker(char input[],char check[]);
int main()
{
    char input[40];
    char check[40];
    int i=0;
    printf("Hello!\nPlease enter a word or character:\n");
    scanf("%s",input);
    printf("I will now repeat this until you type it back to me.\n");
    scanf("%s",check);

    while (!checker(input,check))
    {
        printf("%s\n", input);
        scanf("%s",check);
    }

    printf("Good bye!");

    return 0;
}

int checker(char input[],char check[])
{
    int i,result=1;
    for(i=0; input[i]!='\0' || check[i]!='\0'; i++) {
        if(input[i] != check[i]) {
            result=0;
            break;
        }
    }
    return result;
}

Answer 3

Ok a few things: gets is unsafe and should be replaced with fgets(input, sizeof(input), stdin) so that you don't get a buffer overflow.

Next, to compare strings, you must use strcmp, where a return value of 0 indicates that the two strings match. Using the equality operators (ie. !=) compares the address of the two strings, as opposed to the individual chars inside them.

And also note that, while in this example it won't cause a problem, fgets stores the newline character, '\n' in the buffers also; gets() does not. If you compared the user input from fgets() to a string literal such as "abc" it would never match (unless the buffer was too small so that the '\n' wouldn't fit in it).

EDIT: and beaten by the super fast Mysticial once again.

Answer 4

You can't (usefully) compare strings using != or ==, you need to use strcmp:

while (strcmp(check,input) != 0)

The reason for this is because != and == will only compare the base addresses of those strings. Not the contents of the strings themselves.

Answer 5

Unfortunately you can't use strcmp from <cstring> because it is a C++ header and you specifically said it is for a C application. I had the same problem, so I had to write my own function that implements strcmp:

int strcmp(char input[], char check[])
{
    for (int i = 0;; i++)
    {
        if (input[i] == '\0' && check[i] == '\0')
        {
            break;
        }
        else if (input[i] == '\0' && check[i] != '\0')
        {
            return 1;
        }
        else if (input[i] != '\0' && check[i] == '\0')
        {
            return -1;
        }
        else if (input[i] > check[i])
        {
            return 1;
        }
        else if (input[i] < check[i])
        {
            return -1;
        }
        else
        {
            // characters are the same - continue and check next
        }
    }
    return 0;
}

I hope this serves you well.

Answer 6

    #include<stdio.h>
    #include<string.h>
    int main()
    {
        char s1[50],s2[50];
        printf("Enter the character of strings: ");
        gets(s1);
        printf("\nEnter different character of string to repeat: \n");
        while(strcmp(s1,s2))
        {
            printf("%s\n",s1);
            gets(s2);
        }
        return 0;
    }

This is very simple solution in which you will get your output as you want.