Darin McBride suddenly realized that he had nothing to do with 
   Simon Law or "atoi(const char *s)."
Hi Darin McBride,
 SL>         Be warned...  I am a "newbie" to C.  (Please don't hurt me
 SL> too much...)
 DM> Cool... a user from my own BBS... I'll only hurt you locally.  ;->
        As opposed to globally huh?  *chuckle*
 
 SL>     char *sTemp;
 SL>     int iTemp;
 SL>     printf("Enter a number: ");
 SL>     scanf("%s", sTemp);
 DM> Ooo.... so far, so bad.  sTemp doesn't point anywhere.  You need to
 DM> give it some memory. 
        I suppose that was a big no-no, huh?  All those dang C
tutorials are USELESS I tell you USELESS.
        BTW, why DOES it have to point to a memory location?  And
why do you have to define a specific maximum length to the string?
 DM> #define TEMP_LEN 30
 DM> char* sTemp = malloc(TEMP_LEN) * sizeof(char)); /* remember to free it
 DM> afterwards */ 
        Okay.  This means to allocate 30 chars with of 1 byte each,
right?  And I use free(sTemp) afterwards!
        (BTW, is there a difference between "char* sTemp" and 
         "char *sTemp"?)
 DM> Next problem: scanf.  If the user types in more characters than the
 DM> array has room for, you'll overwrite it.  You could do the following: 
 DM> scanf("%" STR(TEMP_LEN) "s", sTemp);
 DM> Where STR is:
 DM> #define _STR(x) #x
 DM> #define STR(x) _STR(x)
 DM> (A pair of defines are available in Snippets which are close to this
 DM> [perhaps a name change] - I should have Snippets available for
 DM> download, if not, bug me in private mail and I'll find it for ya.) 
 DM> Anyway, this is getting ugly.  However, there is a reason to this
 DM> madness, and it is a point on how to get really ugly code that works. 
 DM> ;-) 
        All right, you've gone and lost me here.  Please explain
those two previous #defines...
 DM> Let's try two different solutions at this point.
 DM> 1. Use scanf.
        Okay.  I understood that.
 DM> 2. Parse everything manually
        Got this one too...
 DM>   What a lot of work to do error-correction (error-protection?)!  
 DM> Thus
 DM> the reason for so many generic user-entry modules... so we don't have
 DM> to continually do all of this... :-) 
        Generic user-entry modules?  You mean extra... dang, I
don't know the C terminology...
 SL>         Is there a way of doing this using a standard function, or
 SL> do I have to check for a zero (\0x30?) in sTemp if atoi returns a 0?
 DM> You could do this - the only reason for the longer solutions above is
 DM> to help you should you want more than just a single number... :-) 
        Thank you very much, then!
Scry you later!
         Fendolin...
... It's all fun and games till someone looses an eye, then it's a SPORT.
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