Ideas for error checking from command line

I am trying to read three doubles from a user's input on the command line. However, my error checking is something to be desired. If I don't enter the correct number of doubles or don't enter a double the program goes into an infinite loop. Here is the main which is handling the I/O:

Code:

int main() {
	double a, b, c, x1, x2;
	int qret, count;

	while(1) {
		printf("Enter variables for quadratic equation:  ");
		
		if( (count = scanf("%lf %lf %lf", &a, &b, &c)) != 3) {
			printf("Invalid Input: Format Is <double> <double> <double>\n");
			printf("%d \n", count);			
		}			

		else if((qret = qsolver(a, b, c, &x1, &x2)) == 3) {
			printf("Error Value:  %d\n", qret);		
			printf("X1 = %lf   X2 = %lf\n\n", x1, x2);
		}
	}
	return 0;
}

If you enter nonsense (e.g. "abc" instead of a number) then you need to "clean up" in the input buffer, as scanf() happens to work in such a way that it reads everything up until it finds something it doesn't like/want. So if you have entered "abc", and scanf() expects a number, it will look at the 'a', say "I don't need that now", and go back to your function with nothing extracted from the input buffer. It is fairly easy to solve by using a loop like this [you may want to make it into a function]:

Code:

int ch;
while((ch = getchar()) != '\n' && ch != EOF);

--
Mats

Also, you might want to look for EOF, and if you find it, quit the program. You could check scanf()'s return value against EOF, or just use feof(). (Or ch after executing matsp's code.)

Thank you that helped for the infinite loop issue, is there a way to make scanf() stop waiting if not enough inputs were entered and if there are too many inputs scanf() just ignore's the extras correct?

Originally Posted by NuNn

Thank you that helped for the infinite loop issue, is there a way to make scanf() stop waiting if not enough inputs were entered and if there are too many inputs scanf() just ignore's the extras correct?

My code works also to clean out extraneous "valid" input. It does not solve the problem of only one or two inputs when you expect 3. To solve that, you will need to read a string (for example fgets()) and then use sscanf() to read from the string - that ALSO solves the problem of dealing with "bad" input nicely, so you don't actually need any loops or such).

--
Mats

Thank you very much I will give that a try.

I have updated my file and it seemed to be working fine, however there is a minor glitch:

Code:

int main() {
	double a, b, c, x1, x2;
	int qret, count;
	char line[30];

	while(1) {
		count=0;
		printf("Enter variables for quadratic equation (Enter 'q' or 'quit' to exit):  ");
		fgets(line, 30, stdin);
	
		if((strncmp(line, "quit", 4) > 0) || (strncmp(line, "q", 4) > 0))
			return 0;
		else
			count = sscanf(line, "%lf %lf %lf", &a, &b, &c);

		if(count != 3) 
			printf("Invalid Input: Format Is <double> <double> <double>\n\n");		
					

		else if(count == 3) {
			qret = qsolver(a, b, c, &x1, &x2);
			printf("Error Value:  %d\n", qret);		
			printf("X1 = %lf   X2 = %lf\n\n", x1, x2);
		}
	}
	return 0;
}

for some reason the count returned by sscanf is 30 some of the time and im unsure as to why this is. I see that my array size is 30, but shouldn't sscanf() return the number of correctly read items?

Hah nevermind, one of my error checking items didn't have a new line character in it so it was appending making it appear so, disregard and thanks.

strncmp(line, "q", 4) - meaningless - the second string is only 1 char long so comparison will never be longer than 2 chars...

better check the return value of fgets
for example

Code:

while(fgets(line, 30, stdin))
{