Thread: new to c : please explain

I've just started learning c.

I would like someone to explain to me what happens in the code below. What i don't understand is why it prints out all the characters i type. Shouldn't it only print out the first character, like the program below that.

Code:

#include <stdio.h>

main() {
    int c;

    c = getchar();
    while (c !=EOF) {
        putchar(c);
        c = getchar();
    }
}

Code:

#include <stdio.h>

main() {
    int c;

    c = getchar();
    putchar(c);
    }
}

Why would it only print the first character? There is a while loop that keeps looping until an EOF is reached, so it will keep on printing characters until EOF.

Also, your second program has an unmatched closing brace.

The first program is echoing your typing because it has a loop. The statements in the body of the loop as enclosed by {} are executed as long as the loop's conditional is true. In this case, the conditional is "c != EOF". The loop is a while loop, so while "c != EOF" is true, the statements

Code:

 putchar(c);
        c = getchar();

are executed in order, until the conditional is false. Then the program exits.

The second program does not contain a loop. It executes its instructions once, then exits.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,
Steve

yes, so getchar gets what you entered, putchar outputs it, getchar gets the next character you entered, putchar outputs it, getchar gets the next character you entered, putchar outputs it, and so on. Why would it behave any other way?

So if you type "hello", getchar will return 'h', putchar will output 'h', then getchar will return 'e', putchar will output 'e', etc.

Ok, i think i understand.

I think i failed to understand that when you enter something into the program it is basically the same as if i had entered each character separately.

Thanks.