I'm trying to determine if a phrase is a palindrome (a word that is the same from left to rigth) or not but i can't make it work. What's wrong?, i can't use pointers or recursion or string type variables

#include <stdio.h>

#include <string.h>

int main()

{

 int i,j = 0,length;
 char space = ' ';
 char phrase [80],phrase2[80],phrase3[80];

 printf("Give me the phrase: ");
 gets(phrase);
 length = strlen(phrase);

 for(i =0; i <= length - 1; i++)
 {
  if(phrase[i] != space)    //Makes the phrase without spaces
  {
   phrase2[i] = phrase[i];
   j++;
  }
 }

 for(i = length -1; i >= 0;i--)
 {
  if(phrase[i] != space)    //Makes the phrase backwards an without spaces
  {
   phrase3[j] = phrase[i];
   j++;
  }
 }

 length = strlen(phrase2);

 for(i =0; i <= length -1;i++)      //Compare the phrases to know if they are the same
 {
  if(phrase2[i] != phrase3[i])
  {
   printf("It's not a palindrome\n");
   return 0;
  }
 }
 printf("It's a palindrome\n");
 return 0;
}

Try this:

 for(i =0, j=0; i <= length - 1; i++)
 {
  if(phrase[i] != space)    //Makes the phrase without spaces
  {
   phrase2[j] = phrase[i];
   j++;
  }
 }

 for(i = length -1, j = 0; i >= 0;i--)
 {
  if(phrase[i] != space)    //Makes the phrase backwards an without spaces
  {
   phrase3[j] = phrase[i];
   j++;
  }
 }

 length = j;

Update

In response to Praetorian's post here's the code to do it without copying the string.

#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>

int main()
{
  int i, j, length;
  char space = ' ';
  char phrase[80];

  printf("Give me the phrase: ");
  gets(phrase);
  length      = strlen(phrase);

  for( i = 0, j = length - 1; i < j; i++, j-- ) {
    while (phrase[i] == space) i++;
    while (phrase[j] == space) j--;
    if( phrase[i] != phrase[j] ) {
      printf("It's not a palindrome\n");
      return 0;
    }
  }

  printf("It's a palindrome\n");
  return 0;
}

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