Consider below simple program in C. The program reads an integer using scanf(), then reads a string using fgets().
// C program to demonstrate the problem when // fgets()/gets() is used after scanf() #include<stdio.h> int main() { int x; char str[100]; scanf("%d", &x); fgets(str, 100, stdin); printf("x = %d, str = %s", x, str); return 0; } |
Input
10 test
Output:
x = 10, str =
The problem with above code is scanf() reads an integer and leaves a newline character in buffer. So fgets() only reads newline and the string “test” is ignored by the program.
The similar problem occurs when scanf() is used in a loop.
// C program to demonstrate the problem when // scanf() is used in a loop #include<stdio.h> int main() { char c; printf("......Enter q to quit......
"); do { printf("Enter a character
"); scanf("%c", &c); printf("%c
", c); } while (c != 'q'); return 0; } |
Input
a b q
Output:
......Enter q to quit...... Enter a character a Enter a character Enter a character b Enter a character Enter a character q
We can notice that above program prints an extra “Enter a character” followed by an extra new line. This happens because every scanf() leaves a newline character in buffer that is read by next scanf.
How to solve above problem?
- We can make scanf() to read a new line by using an extra “ ”, i.e., scanf(“%d ”, &x) . In fact scanf(“%d “, &x) also works (Note extra space).
- We can add a getchar() after scanf() to read an extra newline.
See this and this for corrected programs.
Same problem occurs with Scanner in Java when nextLine() is used after nextXXX().
This article is attributed to GeeksforGeeks.org
leave a comment
0 Comments