Example of struct in book causing a headache

[cjohnman]

Can someone point out what is wrong with this small program it is similar to an example in book I am reading but I am getting a segment core dump? Thanks.

      struct football {
          int yards;
          int points;
          char team[30];
          } nfl;
     
       void print_it(struct football new);
     
      int main()
     {
    
           printf("Who is your favorite team?\n");
          scanf("%s", nfl.team);
     
          printf("How many points did they score?\n");
          scanf("%d", nfl.points);
     
          printf("How many yards did they gain?\n");
          scanf("%d", nfl.yards);
     
          print_it(nfl);

          return 0;
      }

         void print_it(struct football new)
         {
         printf("Your fav team is:%s They scored %d points Gained %d yards\n", new.team, new.points, new.yards);
         }

[matsp]

Try raising the warning level, as it should be able to complain about scanf() needing a pointer as the argument receiving the result.

--
Mats

[vart]

Try raising the warning level, as it should be able to complain about scanf() needing a pointer as the argument receiving the result.

--
Mats

not all compilers do it...

but yes - should be

scanf("%d", &nfl.points);

Why do you use global vars? there is no need here

[cjohnman]

I made the changes below but I am confused if I need user input for the struct members. How would I do this properly?

 struct football {
          int yards;
          int points;
          char team[30];
          } nfl;
     
       void print_it(struct football new);
     
      int main()
     {
                  
          strcpy(nfl.team,"Pittsburgh Steelers"); 
     
          nfl.points = 42;
          nfl.yards = 250;
     
          print_it(nfl);

          return 0;
      }

         void print_it(struct football new)
         {
         printf("Your fav team is:%s They scored %d points Gained %d yards\n", new.team, new.points, new.yards);
         }

[cjohnman]

I am trying to use global variables in my studies because that is how the programs here at work are done. I figure I might as well get used to this now rather then later. Thanks for the feedback. I really appreciate everyones help.

[vart]

How would I do this properly?

if(scanf("%d", &nfl.points) == 1)
{
   /* number read */
}

[vart]

how the programs here at work are done

horrible... better start learning good practices... Worst will hunt you by theirself...

[cjohnman]

When this happens:

if(scanf("%d", &nfl.points) == 1)
{
   /* number read */
}

I am unsure what to place in between if statement. I see you said number read but nfl.points would now already hold the value based on user input right? Still confused a little but what you posted is making some sense. I just want to get it right now to avoid mistakes in the future.

Thanks.

[matsp]

scanf will return the "number of items successfully read", so if the format string contains "%d", then you should expect to get 1 back. Anything else means something went wrong - if it's zero, someone probably typed in an illegal number (such as "a" instead of "123"), if you get -1 (EOF), then the first character read in scanf() was EOF - so no data is available.

It would in some ways, make more sense to do:

if(scanf("%d", &nfl.points) != 1)
{
   /* read error */
}

The red bits indicate my changes.

--
Mats

[cjohnman]

Thank you very much for the detailed explanation. I can now see where and how I can use this. Thanks everyone!!

[cjohnman]

If I use

     85     if(scanf("%d", &nfl.points) != 1)
     86     {
     87      printf("Please enter a number!/n");
     88     }

How could I force the user to enter a correct value before proceeding?

[Zarniwoop]

I'd do it like:

while (scanf("%d", &nfl.points) != 1)
{
     printf("Please enter a number!\n");
}

If you want to you could of course also add the original line asking for the number after printing "Please enter a number". This way it will loop until scanf... is equal to 1.

[vart]

I'd do it like:

what is missing here - cleaning of the stdin from the garbage left there...
also note that if the stdin was redirected to be read from file - it could be nothing left to read from there...

[cjohnman]

When I changed the code to

       while(scanf("%d", &nfl.points) != 1)
         {
          printf("Please enter a number!/n");/* read error */
         }

and enter a character the program is stuck in printf statement. Am I missing something?

[Zarniwoop]

Sorry about that. I usually don't use scanf, but he's right, you should clean the stdin before looping again.

The reason I'm not worried about reaching the end of the file however is because in this case he asks a specific question to the user, so I assume the stdin won't be redirected to read from file in this case.