Thread: Character literals in scanf

Hello again,

Yet another beginner question...

Code:

#include <stdio.h>

int main()
{
 char i[20], j[20];

 scanf("%s/%s", i, j);

 printf("%s %s", i, j);
 return 0;
}

I'm sure you wouldn't ever use scanf like this in practive, but I stuck the "/" in just to see what would happen. When I ran the program, I entered "hello / world". I expected that:

1. "hello" would be stored in i,
2. the "/" would be ignored, since it is identical to the "/" in the format string,
3. "world" would be stored in j,

so the output should be "hello world".

However this isn't the case. All that is output is "hello" followed by a white space and four unrecognisable characters.

If I type in "xyz" followed by enter, the program outputs "xyz" followed by the same unrecognisable characters. That I really don't understand, since scanf has surely only read in one string at this point and should be expecting more input - it beats me why the program should pass beyond scanf at all.

Any suggestions as to what I am overlooking would be most appreciated. Incidentally, I am using Code::Blocks.

Thanks. In fact, just adding a space before the "/" seems to be adequate.

The question now is why didn't it work without the space?

I presume scanf was comparing the white space immediately after the first input string ("hello") with the "/" in its format string, finding they didn't match, and hence returning control to main(). Is that correct?

According to K&R, blanks and tabs are ignored in the format string. It looks as though that is isn't the case here. Also, the statement in K&R that scanf "skips over white space ... as it looks for input values" would seem also to be not entirely true if my analysis above is correct.

A single space in a format string matches any sequence of spaces, tabs, newlines (or anything else where isspace() would be true) on the input.

Is that laid down explicitly in the standard (I haven't been able to find it in K&R - or maybe I have but just haven't properly understood the implications), or is it just a logical consequence of the way scanf deals with %s?

C99:

5 A directive composed of white-space character(s) is executed by reading input up to the
first non-white-space character (which remains unread), or until no more characters can
be read.

OK. Thanks again. I will have to think about that!

K&R state on page 245 that "The format string may contain: Blanks or tabs, which are ignored. ..."

That would seem to conflict with the standard.

Originally Posted by DL1

K&R state on page 245 that "The format string may contain: Blanks or tabs, which are ignored. ..."

That would seem to conflict with the standard.

From the errata to the book on Dennis Ritchie's home page:

245(§B1.3, and also at p. 157 §7.4): The scanf functions do not ignore white space in formats; if white space occurs at a place in the format, any white space in the corresponding input is skipped.

Always a good idea to go through errata when you can.

Indeed. Thanks for the tip - I didn't know that an errata had been published.