fgets won't stop taking input on Mac

Haven't touched C in a while. I don't remember having issues with fgets() but right now, I have this:




int age;
char name[50];

printf("Enter your name\n");
fgets(name, 50, stdin);
scanf("%d", &age);



When prompted for my name, I enter "test" without quotation marks obviously. When I press enter, the terminal just goes down a line... Over and over and over and it never stops and progresses past this point.

I remember having this issue sometimes with scanf and being able to use getchar() after or specify a "%s\n" in the call but not with fgets...

This is on MacOS High Sierra and I'm using gcc-8. What have I forgotten? Thanks.

Pro tip: use [code][/code] tags for code. It will display in a fixed-width font and automatically do syntax highlighting (so paste your code as plain text). This will be much more readable.

As for your problem, it has to do with scanf's behavior. Using %d tells scanf to "listen" for an integer; by definition, %d skips any white space, including new lines. So all those enter presses are ignored by scanf. You'll get a different behavior if you try to type in text after entering your name. And if you enter an integer, it will read it.

Try running this code. Play with different values for age, including floating point numbers and text (basically anything but -1 will work).

Code:

---

#include <stdio.h>


int main(void)
{
    int age = -1;
    char name[50];


    printf("Enter your name\n");
    fgets(name, 50, stdin);
    printf("Enter your age\n");
    scanf("%d", &age);
    printf("Hello %s, you are %d years old.\n", name, age);


    return 0;
}

---

What do you notice about the name? What is printed for age if you don't enter a valid integer?

By the way, the getchar/newline issue you're remembering is probably the one explaned here: FAQ > How do I avoid a "dangling" newline when reading single character user input? - Cprogramming.com

EDIT
Read up on scanf documentation here for more info: scanf(3): input format conversion - Linux man page

Funny thing is the real bug here was that I apparently was exhausted when I was working on this because I failed to realize that I never prompted the user for the age which would have made this whole thing a lot more clear...

Thank you for your explanation!