I'm trying to make a program that checks the word I type in against the word I want and gives to different results, unfortunetly it doesn't work. I am not trying to make a password checker just a test to see if I can check to words against each other. Here is my program-Its written in C just in case you needed to know. #include <stdio.h> main() { int password, pa55w0rd; printf("Enter the password: "); scanf("%ld", &password); scanf("%u", &pa55w0rd); if (password == pa55w0rd) printf("Welcome home sire."); else printf("Get out you scamming burglar of yore!"); }

Man my grammer really sucked I meant *TWO* not to:)

There are a few things wrong. 1. When the user enters in a string, like a password, you need a character array to store the string. You've declared a single 'int' variable which isn't suitable to hold the string. 2. When you need to compare strings, the best way to do it is with the strcmp() function. 3. It's spelled 'grammar' not 'grammer.' #include <stdio.h> int main() { char password[32]; char password2[32]; printf("Enter the password: "); gets(password); printf("Enter the second password: "); gets(password2); if(!strcmp(password,password2)) printf("Welcome home sire.\n"); else printf("Get out you scamming burglar of yore!\n"); return 0; } Good luck.

My spelling appears to be as bad as my grammar:P Thanks tommycoolman.

My compiler told me that the gets function was dangerous and shouldn't be used (i'm serious word for word). is their a reason for this?

There certainly is. The reason is this: The gets function reads data from the keyboard into a string. But it makes NO restriction on the length. So consider this: char imtooshort[5]; gets(imtooshort); What if I type in something longer than 5 characters? I overflow the buffer! But this isn't "dangerous", it's annoying. The real problem comes when you realize what is located somewhere near the beginning of your code (Where imtooshort is defined): the return code. When your C function ends, it takes some return data from the stack (if you don't know what that is don't worry about it). Basically, by overflowing imtooshort with a certain stream it would be possible to get the program to start some other code...like a virus. IT's also possible to execute certain superuser programs in linux without proper authorization. Long chunk of information short: the gets function, if misused, could let Very Bad People do Very Bad Things to your computer system. But I wouldn't worry about it too much. A better solution, however, would be to use a function like this: void safegets(char *ptr,int length) { int n; for(n=0;n<length;n++) { *ptr=getchar(); //I think this is the right function if(*ptr==13) //again im guessing on the 13, ill check break; } *ptr=0; } This is a gets() function that stops after "length" characters. IT should be safe, as long as you choose a good length for your buffer size. I'll write a better function and post back later. But you get the idea..

I understand more or less, thanks. That is very good to know.