Comparing user-inputted characters in C

Question

The following code snippets are from a C program.

The user enters Y or N.

char *answer = \'\\0\';

scanf (\" %c\", answer);

if (*answer == (\'Y\' ||         


        

Answer 1

I see two problems:

The pointer answer is a null pointer and you are trying to dereference it in scanf, this leads to undefined behavior.

You don't need a char pointer here. You can just use a char variable as:

char answer;
scanf(" %c",&answer);

Next to see if the read character is 'y' or 'Y' you should do:

if( answer == 'y' || answer == 'Y') {
  // user entered y or Y.
}

If you really need to use a char pointer you can do something like:

char var;
char *answer = &var; // make answer point to char variable var.
scanf (" %c", answer);
if( *answer == 'y' || *answer == 'Y') {