Using scanf with NSStrings - objective-c

Question

I want the user to input a string and then assign the input to an NSString. Right now my code looks like this:
NSString *word;
scanf("%s", &word);

Answer 1

The scanf function reads into a C string (actually an array of char), like this:
char word[40];
int nChars = scanf("%39s", word); // read up to 39 chars (leave room for NUL)
You can convert a char array into NSString like this:
NSString* word2 = [NSString stringWithBytes:word
length:nChars
encoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding];
However scanf only works with console (command line) programs. If you're trying to get input on a Mac or iOS device then scanf is not what you want to use to get user input.

Answer 2

scanf does not work with any object types. If you have a C string and want to create an NSString from it, use -[NSString initWithBytes:length:encoding:].

Answer 3

scanf does not work with NSString as scanf doesn’t work on objects. It works only on primitive datatypes such as:
int
float
BOOL
char
What to do?
Technically a string is made up of a sequence of individual characters. So to accept string input, you can read in the sequence of characters and convert it to a string.
use:
[NSString stringWithCString:cstring encoding:1];
Here is a working example:
NSLog(#"What is the first name?");
char cstring[40];
scanf("%s", cstring);
firstName = [NSString stringWithCString:cstring encoding:1];
Here’s an explanation of the above code, comment by comment:
You declare a variable called cstring to hold 40 characters.
You then tell scanf to expect a list of characters by using the %s format specifier.
Finally, you create an NSString object from the list of characters that were read in.
Run your project; if you enter a word and hit Enter, the program should print out the same word you typed. Just make sure the word is less than 40 characters; if you enter more, you might cause the program to crash — you are welcome to test that out yourself! :]
Taken from: RW.

Answer 4

This is how I'd do it:
char word [40];
scanf("%s",word);
NSString * userInput = [[NSString alloc] initWithCString: word encoding: NSUTF8StringEncoding];

Answer 5

yes, but sscanf does, and may be a good solution for complex NSString parsing.

Answer 6

Maybe this will work for you because it accepts string with spaces as well.
NSLog(#"Enter The Name Of State");
char name[20];
gets(name);
NSLog(#"%s",name);

Answer 7

Simple Solution is
char word[40];
scanf("%39s", word);
NSString* word2 = [NSString stringWithUTF8String:word];

Answer 8

The NSFileHandle class is an object-oriented wrapper for a file descriptor. For files, you can read, write, and seek within the file.
NSFileHandle *inputFile = [NSFileHandle fileHandleWithStandardInput];
NSData *inputData = [inputFile availableData];
NSString *word = [[NSString alloc]initWithData:inputData encoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding];