将char *传递给printf（）调用时出错

Question

/***** reads user's input for an entry */

int input_string(char *prompt, char *s, int count) 
{
    char c;

    printf(prompt);
    while ((c = getchar()) != EOF 
           && c != '\n' && count > 0) {
        *s = c;
        s++;
        count--;
    }
    *s = '\0';
    return 0;
}

Am new to c programming. I was going through an example of a simple database program & I met this code print(prompt); , my compiler gives this error about it,

format string is not a string literal(potentially insecure) [-werror, -wformat-security].

Kindly help in stopping the error.

Answer 1

As in yout code,

 printf(prompt);

is bad , as it open up provision for string formatting attacks . You can replace that with

puts(prompt);

in case you don't intend to use any conversion specifier (and related arguments) in your output.