Beginner: Why doesn't this work?

Hi, just started c programming on a Mac. I have this simple program and run it in a terminal but it doesn't terminate. Just keeps waiting for input. It shows EOF as -1 but if i type -1 it keeps waiting?

Code:

---

#include <stdio.h>

main()
{
        int c;
       
        printf("%d\n", EOF);
       
        while ((c = getchar()) != EOF)
                putchar(c);
}

---

Welcome to the boards.

There's a special keystroke to get an EOF from the console (keyboard input). In *nix OS's, that's usually Ctrl-D. In Dos/Windows it's Ctrl-Z.

gg

You can't enter "EOF" as a regular keyboard character (like typing "-1"). Try CONTROL+C or some other sequence. (On Windows it's CTRL+Z). In XCode, it's CONTROL+C. Not sure what Terminal requires.

Todd

Thanks very much. It's CTRL+D. Back to it. :)

Check out the FAQ, lots of good stuff in there for beginners: http://faq.cprogramming.com/cgi-bin/smartfaq.cgi

From this FAQ entry, you'll see that you should have a return statement from main(). It's good practice to always specify the return type as well. In this case, main() returns an int.

gg

Thanks. Some great stuff there. I'll make sure to check it when i have a query.