How to read a line from the console in C?

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You need dynamic memory management, and use the fgets function to read your line. However, there seems to be no way to see how many characters it read. So you use fgetc:

char * getline(void) {
    char * line = malloc(100), * linep = line;
    size_t lenmax = 100, len = lenmax;
    int c;

    if(line == NULL)
        return NULL;

    for(;;) {
        c = fgetc(stdin);
        if(c == EOF)
            break;

        if(--len == 0) {
            len = lenmax;
            char * linen = realloc(linep, lenmax *= 2);

            if(linen == NULL) {
                free(linep);
                return NULL;
            }
            line = linen + (line - linep);
            linep = linen;
        }

        if((*line++ = c) == '\n')
            break;
    }
    *line="\0";
    return linep;
}

Note: Never use gets ! It does not do bounds checking and can overflow your buffer

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