Validating e-mail address input in C

Question

I have this little function to validate e-mail. It's a little piece of code to search major mistakes in e-mail input and it's part of a bigger program I have to complete as a school assignment. Is there a better way to do it in C?

I'd like to do it in regex but if I have understood correctly, C under Windows doesn't support complex regex. And I use scanf to make testing this code simpler. Later, I replace it with another function that reads user input. Test is an array test[40] that is declared in main.

In addition there is a compiler warning about my for loop, that value computed is not used. It probably means *ch. I use it to end for loop when *ch reaches '0円'. I know I could use while loop. However, is there a solution to fix that or a workaround or a better solution using for loop? And I'd like to know, what would you do differently or what would you also check in addition to what I am checking in my code.

int test(char test[])
{
 int i;
 char *pos1, *pos2;
 char *ch;
 puts("Enter email!");
 scanf("%39s", test);
 while (1) {
 for (i = 0, ch = test; *ch; *ch++) {
 if (*ch == '@') {
 pos1 = ch; // <-stores last @ address
 i++;
 }
 }
 pos2 = ch; // <-stores end address ("0円") of test
 /* If there is only one "@" */
 if (i == 1) {
 /* Pos1 - test <-a character must be before "@". Ch - pos1 <-Counts
 * backwards from the end of the string towards "@". A character
 * must be between "@" and "." */
 while (pos1 - test && ch - pos1 > 1) {
 /* From the end of string to "." has to be atleast 2 chars */
 if ((pos2 - ch) > 2 && *ch == '.') {
 printf("pos2 - ch is %d and *ch is %c",pos2 - ch, *ch);
 return 1;
 }
 ch--;
 }
 }
 puts("Email wrong! Enter again");
 scanf("%39s", test);
 } /* End while */
 return 1;
}

• CiaPan: A 'little function' might not be sufficient here. See the Wikipedia article 'Email address', section 'Validation and verification' (link) and RFC-s linked there. Some relevant examples and nice comments available in 'I Knew How To Validate An Email Address Until I Read The RFC' at 'You've Been Haacked'.
• Name: @CiaPan- Thank you. That's why it is a "little function". It seems, that validating e-mail requires a lot of checking.

Answer 1

Formatting

for (i = 0, ch = test; *ch; *ch++) {
 if (*ch == '@') {
 pos1 = ch; // <-stores last @ address
 i++;
 }
 }
 pos2 = ch;

You have an extraneous level of indentation in there that throws out that block.

int i;
char *pos1, *pos2;
char *ch;

This is a weird indentation level, it doesn't match anything else and is unnecessary. It literally just complicates how you read it.

---

Naming

• int test(char test[]):

Naming both your function and variables test is bad practice. How am I meant to tell as an outsider reading your code what it is that your code does.

/* Pos1 - test <-a character must be before "@". Ch - pos1 <-Counts
 * backwards from the end of the string towards "@". A character
 * must be between "@" and "." */

If you feel the need to explain your code with comment blocks like this, you can probably improve your naming.

Name your variables as to what they are. For Example: charactersAfterAt.

---

Duplicate Logic

scanf("%39s", test);
while(1){
 // ...
 scanf("%39s", test);
}

You can reduce duplicate logic by declaring the scan inside the loop at the top.