Thread: Alternative to goto?

K... I got it to work... thanks for the help

I found the easiest way to do this was simply making the default case look like:

Code:

 default:
                printf( "Bad input, try again" );
                continue;

Nothing wrong with this, is there?
And what does the getchar(); do after the scanf(); ? It is needed for the program to operate correctly, but I still do not understand what it is doing.

Originally Posted by .:Lyle:.

I found the easiest way to do this was simply making the default case look like:

Code:

 default:
                printf( "Bad input, try again" );
                continue;

Nothing wrong with this, is there?

I don't know how your current program looks like but I would guess if you input something like "abc" you get 3 error messages because continue will jump to the beginning of the do-while-loop and the while-loop which consumes any character left in the input stream won't be executed.

And what does the getchar(); do after the scanf(); ? It is needed for the program to operate correctly, but I still do not understand what it is doing.

If you input something, the characters are stored in the input stream. scanf(%d) consumes as many characters as it can interpret as a decimal number and leaves all additional characters in the input stream. E.g. if you enter "1" followed by <Enter>, the input stream looks like "1\n". scanf() consumes the "1" but leaves the "\n" in the buffer. getchar() gets the next character in the input stream (in this case "\n"). Thus many programmers (especially beginners) use the combination scanf()/getchar() to avoid problems later in the program because of unwanted characters (especially "\n") still left in the input stream.

IMHO a while-loop as Salem suggested is more robust, because it removes all characters, not just the next one.

Bye, Andreas

my entire program looks like this right now.

Code:

#include <stdio.h>
 
int main(void) {
   int input;
   
  
      printf( "1. Play game\n" );
      printf( "2. Load game\n" );
      printf( "3. Play multiplayer\n" );
      printf( "4. Exit\n" );
     do{    int ch; 
    input = 0;
    printf(" Your choice: ");
      scanf( "%d", &input );
      printf("\n");
    getchar();
 
      /* There are no other functions for this example. Only the users choice is printed to show it's working properly. */
      switch( input)
      {
         case 1:
            //playgame();   
            printf("1 was chosen"); 
            break;
         case 2:
            //loadgame();
            printf("2 was chosen");
            break;
         case 3:
            //playmultiplayer();
            printf("3 was chosen");
            break;
         case 4:
            printf( "Goodbye" );
            break;
         default:
            printf( "Bad input, try again" );
            continue; // is OK to put here, but not needed, since it is last in order
      }    //while((ch=getchar()) != '\n' && ch != EOF);
      printf("\n\n");
   }while(input != 4);
 
   return 0;
}

I haven't encountered any compile or runtime errors... but I invite you to check, as I am not sure what you mean.

I am just learning C, I understand now what I would need to do, but I don't feel it necesary to correct it that far... I Will fix it later when I actually make a game that uses it. Thanks go to everybody who helped me with this, the feel of this forum is good, full of helpful and knowledgable people... I am going to take on a project soon enough, the graal relay. I will post a million questions later about it