arrays - Translation limit in C

Question

I am attempting to capture input from the user via scanf:

char numStrings[5000];   
printf("Enter string of numbers:

"); 
scanf("%s", numStrings);

However, the length of the string that is inputted is 5000 characters. The translation limit in c99 is 4095 characters. Do I need to instruct the user to break their input in half or is there a better work around that I cannot think of?

Answer 1

You can input a string a lot larger than that, the stack is at least 1MB in common OS's, it's 8MB's on Linux, so that's the actual limit, 1M is 1024KB so you could for example try with 512KB which is 524288B

char string[524288];
scanf("%524287s", string);

will be most likely ok, if it's still too small, then use malloc().