Replace multiple spaces by single space in C

Question

I want to repace multiple spaces in a string by single space, however my following code doesn't work. What's the logical mistake?

#include<stdio.h>
#include<string.h>
main()
{
char input[100];
int i,j,n,z=0;
scanf("%d",&n);
z=n;
for(i=0;i<n;i++)
scanf("%c",&input[i]);
for(i=0;i<n;i++)
{
    if(input[i]==' ' && (input[i+1]==' ' || input[i-1]==' '))
    {
        --z;
        for(j=i;j<n;j++)
        input[j]=input[j+1];
    }
}
for(i=0;i<z;i++)
    printf("%c",input[i]);
printf("\n");
}

Answer 1

I would do something like this:

void replace_multi_space_with_single_space(char *str)
{
    char *dest = str;  /* Destination to copy to */

    /* While we're not at the end of the string, loop... */
    while (*str != '\0')
    {
        /* Loop while the current character is a space, AND the next
         * character is a space
         */
        while (*str == ' ' && *(str + 1) == ' ')
            str++;  /* Just skip to next character */

       /* Copy from the "source" string to the "destination" string,
        * while advancing to the next character in both
        */
       *dest++ = *str++;
    }

    /* Make sure the string is properly terminated */    
    *dest = '\0';
}

Of course, the above function requires you to properly terminate the string, which you currently do not.

What the function above does, is basically copy the string over itself. The exception is when there is a space, when multiple spaces are simply discarded.

Since the function modifies the source string, it can not be used on string literals.

Answer 2

Why make it more complicated than it needs to be? You can use strtok to check for single whitespaces and just ignore those. Then you can use strcat to concatenate the string into a full sentence and then you're done.

This is how I did it:

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

int main(void) {
    char *pch;
    char sentence[1000];
    char without[1000];

    printf("Sentence: ");
    fgets(sentence,1000, stdin);
    strtok(sentence, "\n"); // remove any newlines
    pch = strtok(sentence, " ");
    while(pch != NULL) {
      strcat(without, pch);
      strcat(without, " \0");
      pch = strtok(NULL, " ");
    }
    without[strlen(without)-1] = '\0'; // remove extra whitespace at the end
    printf("|%s|\n",without);
    return 0;
}