Why does this happen?

[metros]

Hi. When I run the following program....... and enter in for example 12345

why does it print out 2345. Where is 1 gone?

int main ()
{        

 int c;        
c = getchar();
while(c !=EOF) {

c = getchar();
printf("%c", c);
}

[laserlight]

You read it before the loop, but never printed it out. As such, you should swap the order of the two statements in the loop.

[metros]

You read it before the loop, but never printed it out. As such, you should swap the order of the two statements in the loop.

Ah I see. But why does having c=getchar() before print make 1 disappear?

[EVOEx]

Ah I see. But why does having c=getchar() before print make 1 disappear?

Step 1: getchar reads 1
Step 2: getchar reads 2
Step 3: print 2
Step 4: getchar reads 3
Step 5: print 3
...
Step x: getchar reads eof
Step x+1: print eof

[brewbuck]

Ah I see. But why does having c=getchar() before print make 1 disappear?

If you pour out the contents of your coffee cup and replace them with Pepsi, would you expect the coffee cup to still contain coffee?

[metros]

I changed it a bit to this.........

line[i] = getchar();
while(line[i] != EOF) {
line[i] = getchar();

}

for(i = 0; i < strlen(line);  i++) {

      printf("%c",line[i]);
}

However I get the following output.......

Dۅ��r���5���2���ۅ�

after putting in ddfdf

What went wrong here?

[metros]

ultimately what I want to do is take each input form the command line and put them into their own variable. At the moment I'm playing around with printf to see what is actually contained in the array.

[nadroj]

What you had

int main ()
{        

 int c;        
c = getchar();
while(c !=EOF) {

c = getchar();
printf("%c", c);
}

was almost entirely correct. The hint

you should swap the order of the two statements in the loop.

is referring to the two bold lines.

The first "getchar" before the while loop, of course, gets a char. Then you go in the while loop and overwrite it by immediately getting another char. What you want to do is get a char, enter the while loop, print the char, get another char, and loop. This is what the hint above is saying to do.

[nadroj]

The problem you had above with the "printf" is that you're trying to print a "char[]", but it doesnt have a null terminating character ('\0'). When you pass a string to "printf", it will print all of the contents of the string, up until (and excluding) the null terminating character. If the string does not contain the null terminating character, it keeps printing until either it finds one or it segfaults. If the string isnt null terminated, then just printf a character ("%c"), or add the terminating character.

[EVOEx]

I changed it a bit to this.........

line[i] = getchar();
while(line[i] != EOF) {
line[i] = getchar();

}

for(i = 0; i < strlen(line);  i++) {

      printf("%c",line[i]);
}

However I get the following output.......

Dۅ��r���5���2���ۅ�

after putting in ddfdf

What went wrong here?

Do you initialize i to a proper value? And you don't increment it after reading a character. And, as nadroj said, you have to 0-terminate the string as well.
Also, watch out that i doesn't become bigger than the size of the buffer, as the buffer will overflow otherwise.

[vivekraj]

The best way to read the characters and printing in the stdout is the following.I did small changes in your code as follows.

int main ()
{        
int c;        
while((c=getchar()) !=EOF) //reading the character from user and checks whether it isn't EOF
printf("%c", c); //prints the character if it isn't EOF.Else,come out from the loop
}

[laserlight]

The best way to read the characters and printing in the stdout is the following.I did small changes in your code as follows.

Your example is fundamentally the same as metros' first posted attempt, once the two statements that I mentioned are swapped.