Thread: Want User Input but Program Ends

Hi,
I'm working through O'Reilly's Practical C Programming, just for fun, and one of the exercises in section 5 is to write a program to convert °C to °F and vice versa. Here's what I have so far..

Code:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>

char choice[2] ; // which conversion do I want ? 
int userChoice ; // the int to pass to the if .. then 
char input[11] ; // the number to be converted
float temp ; // the temperature to start with
float result ; // the result

int main () 

{

  printf ("\n(1) - Celsius - Fahrenheit ") ;
  printf ("\n(2) - Fahrenheit - Celsius\n\n") ;
  fgets (choice, sizeof(choice), stdin) ;
  sscanf (choice, "%d", &userChoice) ;

  if (userChoice == 1)
  {
	printf ("\n\nPlease enter temperature in degrees Celsius : ") ;
	fgets (input, sizeof(input), stdin) ;
	sscanf (input, "%f", &temp) ;
  }

  return 0 ;

}

Now, there are undoubtedly far more elegant ways of doing this, but for the moment, I'm right at the basics. What I can't understand is that the program compiles without any errors, it asks the user to choose which conversion he wants.. and then prints out the Please enter temperature in degrees Celsius : and exits.

Why? I don't get it. The fgets is the same format as the previous time when input was asked for, and yet bang - it exits.

Help !

Your first fgets read will read at most one character from the input. Since you have two characters ('1' and 'enter key') the last one is still there when your next fgets happens.

Your choice variable's array isn't long enough. fgets will null terminate the string automatically, so the newline character is left behind in the buffer because there's no room for it. In other words, after the first fgets your choice array looks like

Code:

-------------
|  1  |  \0 |
-------------

and the stdin buffer still has a \n in it, which the next fgets will happily take as input. If you increase the size of the choice array, then you'll end up with

Code:

--------------------
|  1  |  \n |  \0  |
--------------------

And the second fgets will be waiting for the user to input something.

Originally Posted by tabstop

Your first fgets read will read at most one character from the input. Since you have two characters ('1' and 'enter key') the last one is still there when your next fgets happens.

Ha! *slaps forehead*

Code:

fpurge (stdin) ;

.. did the trick.

Thanks!

Originally Posted by Salem

fpurge() isn't a standard function.

If you have
char buff[BUFSIZ];
then you generally don't have to worry about whether Dirty Harry types in 6 characters or only 5, or worry that he can't remember in all the excitement. You as a programmer no longer have to "feel lucky" when it comes to choosing the buffer size.

Trying to be overly precise on the input buffer size just leads to random bodge code to fix it.

Thanks for these tips. I'm supposing that the book will mention char buff later on. I'm still at that stage where even a missed semicolon takes ages for me to notice. I just did another exercise in the book - to calculate the square of the distance between two points, and my first char initialization looked like char[100] distance1. Dang, I had to sit and stare at it for about an hour before I saw it!

Thanks again for your advice - much appreciated. :-)