How can I read an input string of unknown length?

Question

If I don\'t know how long the word is, I cannot write char m[6];,
The length of the word is maybe ten or twenty long. How can I use scanf to ge

Answer 1

Safer and faster (doubling capacity) version:

char *readline(char *prompt) {
  size_t size = 80;
  char *str = malloc(sizeof(char) * size);
  int c;
  size_t len = 0;
  printf("%s", prompt);
  while (EOF != (c = getchar()) && c != '\r' && c != '\n') {
    str[len++] = c;
    if(len == size) str = realloc(str, sizeof(char) * (size *= 2));
  }
  str[len++]='\0';
  return realloc(str, sizeof(char) * len);
}