How do you allow spaces to be entered using scanf?

People (and especially beginners) should never use scanf("%s") or gets() or any other functions that do not have buffer overflow protection, unless you know for certain that the input will always be of a specific format (and perhaps not even then).

Remember than scanf stands for "scan formatted" and there's precious little less formatted than user-entered data. It's ideal if you have total control of the input data format but generally unsuitable for user input.

Use fgets() (which has buffer overflow protection) to get your input into a string and sscanf() to evaluate it. Since you just want what the user entered without parsing, you don't really need sscanf() in this case anyway:

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

/* Maximum name size + 1. */

#define MAX_NAME_SZ 256

int main(int argC, char *argV[]) {
    /* Allocate memory and check if okay. */

    char *name = malloc(MAX_NAME_SZ);
    if (name == NULL) {
        printf("No memory\n");
        return 1;
    }

    /* Ask user for name. */

    printf("What is your name? ");

    /* Get the name, with size limit. */

    fgets(name, MAX_NAME_SZ, stdin);

    /* Remove trailing newline, if there. */

    if ((strlen(name) > 0) && (name[strlen (name) - 1] == '\n'))
        name[strlen (name) - 1] = '\0';

    /* Say hello. */

    printf("Hello %s. Nice to meet you.\n", name);

    /* Free memory and exit. */

    free (name);
    return 0;
}

Try

char str[11];
scanf("%10[0-9a-zA-Z ]", str);

Hope that helps.

This example uses an inverted scanset, so scanf keeps taking in values until it encounters a '\n'-- newline, so spaces get saved as well

#include <stdio.h>

int main (int argc, char const *argv[])
{
    char name[20];

    // get up to buffer size - 1 characters (to account for NULL terminator)
    scanf("%19[^\n]", name);
    printf("%s\n", name);
    return 0;
}

Don't use scanf() to read strings without specifying a field width. You should also check the return values for errors:

#include <stdio.h>

#define NAME_MAX    80
#define NAME_MAX_S "80"

int main(void)
{
    static char name[NAME_MAX + 1]; // + 1 because of null
    if(scanf("%" NAME_MAX_S "[^\n]", name) != 1)
    {
        fputs("io error or premature end of line\n", stderr);
        return 1;
    }

    printf("Hello %s. Nice to meet you.\n", name);
}

Alternatively, use fgets():

#include <stdio.h>

#define NAME_MAX 80

int main(void)
{
    static char name[NAME_MAX + 2]; // + 2 because of newline and null
    if(!fgets(name, sizeof(name), stdin))
    {
        fputs("io error\n", stderr);
        return 1;
    }

    // don't print newline
    printf("Hello %.*s. Nice to meet you.\n", strlen(name) - 1, name);
}

getline()

Now part of POSIX, none-the-less.

It also takes care of the buffer allocation problem that you asked about earlier, though you have to take care of freeing the memory.

If someone is still looking, here's what worked for me - to read an arbitrary length of string including spaces.

Thanks to many posters on the web for sharing this simple & elegant solution. If it works the credit goes to them but any errors are mine.

char *name;
scanf ("%m[^\n]s",&name);
printf ("%s\n",name);

While you really shouldn't use scanf() for this sort of thing, because there are much better calls such as gets() or getline(), it can be done:

#include <stdio.h>

char* scan_line(char* buffer, int buffer_size);

char* scan_line(char* buffer, int buffer_size) {
   char* p = buffer;
   int count = 0;
   do {
       char c;
       scanf("%c", &c); // scan a single character
       // break on end of line, string terminating NUL, or end of file
       if (c == '\r' || c == '\n' || c == 0 || c == EOF) {
           *p = 0;
           break;
       }
       *p++ = c; // add the valid character into the buffer
   } while (count < buffer_size - 1);  // don't overrun the buffer
   // ensure the string is null terminated
   buffer[buffer_size - 1] = 0;
   return buffer;
}

#define MAX_SCAN_LENGTH 1024

int main()
{
   char s[MAX_SCAN_LENGTH];
   printf("Enter a string: ");
   scan_line(s, MAX_SCAN_LENGTH);
   printf("got: \"%s\"\n\n", s);
   return 0;
}

/*reading string which contains spaces*/
#include<stdio.h>
int main()
{
   char *c,*p;
   scanf("%[^\n]s",c);
   p=c;                /*since after reading then pointer points to another 
                       location iam using a second pointer to store the base 
                       address*/ 
   printf("%s",p);
   return 0;
 }