What is the point of calling "getchar()" after printing an error with "fprintf"?

Question

I'm currently in the process of learning to use OpenGL, and to start I'm following a series of tutorials from http://www.opengl-tutorial.org/.

In the first tutorial, they begin main() with this if-statement:

// Initialize GLFW
if (!glfwInit() ) 
{
  fprintf( stderr, "failed to initialize GLFW\n" );
  getchar();
  return -1;
}

I understand that fprintf is an unbuffered print that's kind of the standard for indicating an error. And return -1 makes sense too. But what's the point of calling getchar() after indicating an error?

Thanks.

To prevent the application from closing by waiting for user input i guess. — Biruk Abebe, Apr 27 '16 at 16:48
Possible duplicate: [Pause screen at program completion in C](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9386651/pause-screen-at-program-completion-in-c) — NathanOliver, Apr 27 '16 at 16:48
It's just there so that you have to hit any key before continuing. — Paul R, Apr 27 '16 at 16:49

score 6 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 27 '16 at 16:49

It's probably because the .exe is a command-line utility. Without the getchar() call, if a user simply double-clicks the .exe on Windows, and the program gets an error right away and exits, the user will just see a command prompt window pop up and then disappear, and never see the error. Waiting for user input gives the user a chance to see what happened.

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 27 '16 at 16:57

getchar() is used to pause the application after the execution in order to leave the command line and the output visible to the user.

Without getchar function the application would exit immediately and, if it was launched from a graphical user interface, the results/errors would not be visible.

What is the point of calling "getchar()" after printing an error with "fprintf"?

2 Answers2