Question: At some point in my code, I want to read a name for a file that I will be creating (and/or editing) and I've come up with the following:

```
FILE *fp;
char filename[15];
fgets(filename, 15, stdin);
fp = fopen(filename, "a");
fprintf(fp, "some stuff goes here");
fclose(fp);

```

Even though that does compile and run, it does not create (or open, if I manually create it) the file specified by `filename`.  

What would you suggest?

Answer: 
[`fgets()`](http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/functions/fgets.html) stores the newline character read from `stdin` after reading a line of input. You need to strip it manually, e.g.

```
size_t len = strlen(filename);
if (len > 0 && filename[len - 1] == '\n')
    filename[len - 1] = '\0';

```

You should also check that `fopen()` doesn't return `NULL`, which it will do if it was unable to open the file. I think using `fprintf` with a `NULL` file pointer is undefined behaviour.
Since fgets will read string util an EOF or a newline, and if a newline is read, it is stored into the buffer. That means you have to manually trim the ending newline if any. I'd suggest use fscanf instead, it won't add the newline to the buffer:

```
char filename[15];
int ret = fscanf(stdin, "%s", filename);
if (ret != 1) { // handle input error }
fp = fopen(filename, "a");

```