Dynamically stored strings. What is the exact method?

Hello there.

I'm (kind of) new to programming as you can see, and I have a question.

I want the user to input a string (for example: a product code) but store it dynamically. There must be an other way instead of a static array with, let's say, 50 elements. What I have been trying is this:

Expand|Select|Wrap|Line Numbers

1.     int c;
2.      char *w, test;
3.      w=&test;
4.     printf("Give product code: ");
5.     while (c = getchar() != EOF)
6.         {
7.         *w=c;
8.         w=w+1;
9.         }
10.       w=w+1;
11.        *w='\0';
12.  
13.  
14.     printf("%s", *w);

However, I always seem to get (null) as the printf result. I even tryed setting a counter and printing the *(w-counter) result but yet again... no luck. Any help really appreciated. :)

(By the way, on a side note. Is there any way I can avoid the declaration of "test" and "w=&test"?)

Thank you very much. :)

Well I added the counter inside the "while" loop but I didn't have high hopes anyway. ;) Here is what it looked like.

Expand|Select|Wrap|Line Numbers

1.         int c,counter=0;
2.      char *w, test;
3.      w=&test;
4.     printf("Give product code: ");
5.     while (c = getchar() != EOF)
6.         {
7.         *w=c;
8.         w=w+1;
9.                 counter=counter+1;
10.         }
11.       w=w+1;
12.        *w='\0';
13.  
14.  
15.     printf("%s", *(w-counter));

THis code:

Expand|Select|Wrap|Line Numbers

1. int c,counter=0;
2.      char *w, test;
3.      w=&test;
4.     printf("Give product code: ");
5.     while (c = getchar() != EOF)
6.         {
7.         *w=c;
8.         w=w+1;
9.                 counter=counter+1;
10.         }
11.       w=w+1;
12.        *w='\0';
13.  
14.  
15.     printf("%s", *(w-counter));
16.  

Has some problems. First, test is 1 char. w is a pointer to that char. That means you can w=w+1 becuse you don't own the location w+1.

You will need to build an array. Check out strcat().