Why I can't take 10 character input with scanf? each time I enter a character the loop iterates twice. Why?

Question

I want to take character input using scanf instead of getchar(). So I wrote this coder but each time I input one character value it iterates twice. So I am able to take only 5 inputs. Why is this happening?

#include<stdio.h>

int main() {
    char arr[10];
    for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
        printf("%d:", i);
        scanf("%c", & arr[i]);
        printf("%c", arr[i]);
        printf("\n");
    }
}

David Ranieri · Answer 1 · 2022-04-19T08:17:28.283

0

You need to consume the trailing newline left by the Enter key when %c is used as format specifier in scanf, otherwise the \n remains in the buffer being consumed as an input/character in the next iteration.

Switch from

scanf("%c", & arr[i]);

to

scanf(" %c", &arr[i]); // Notice a space before %c

edited Apr 19 '22 at 08:17

answered Apr 19 '22 at 07:37

David Ranieri

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Thankyou so much. But can you kindly explain why its happening? – Rifat Al Emam Shoron Apr 19 '22 at 08:00
If you typed “abcdefghij” and then hit return, @RifatAlEmamShoron, then you would see what you wanted. When you type “a” and return, you type two characters which are read in succession. – Jonathan Leffler Apr 19 '22 at 08:44

Why I can't take 10 character input with scanf? each time I enter a character the loop iterates twice. Why?

1 Answers1