Objective-c - get count elements of an array - objective-c

Question

I'm an Objective-C rookie, and I want to get the elements count of an array of chars. I managed to find only this way:
#autoreleasepool {
char parola[30];
int c;
NSLog(#"Write word:");
scanf("%c",&parola[30]);
c = sizeof(parola)/sizeof(parola[0]);
NSLog(#"The word has %i letters",c);
}
return 0;
The problem is that it gives me the length I specified in the array declaration, not the elements count.
Any idea?

Answer 1

You have a few errors there.
You want the user to input a "word", i.e. a string. Then don't use %c, which only scans one character, but %s instead, which scans one string (note that that can mean that the user also enters spaces, or more than 29 characters).
You store beyond the array. The array is declared as
char parola[30];
That means it can be indexed with values 0 .. 29. But your &parola[30] points beyond the array (at index 30, which does not "exist"). That is not what you want. Do this:
scanf("%s", parola);
And hope that the user doesn't enter more than 29 characters.
The length of the string can then be found using
c = strlen(parola);
So this becomes:
#autoreleasepool {
char parola[30];
unsigned long c;
NSLog(#"Write word:");
scanf("%s", parola);
c = strlen(parola);
NSLog(#"The word has %ld letters", c);
}
return 0;
Instead of NSLog, you can also use printf:
printf("Write word: ");
and
printf("The word has %ld letters\n", c);
That will look cleaner, as NSLog() always shows these extra infos, like
2017-06-04 12:37:25.758802+0200 SOTest[4718:2690388]
And that is, IMO, plain ugly. Good for a log, but not good for clean screen output. The output now becomes:
Write word: Tesla
The word has 5 letters
Program ended with exit code: 0