Why is scanf() causing infinite loop in this code?

Question

I\'ve a small C-program which just reads numbers from stdin, one at each loop cycle. If the user inputs some NaN, an error should be printed to the console and the input pro

Answer 1

Hi I know this is an old thread but I just finished a school assignment where I ran into this same problem. My solution is that I used gets() to pick up what scanf() left behind.

Here is OP code slightly re-written; probably no use to him but perhaps it will help someone else out there.

#include 

    int main()
    {
        int number, p = 0, n = 0;
        char unwantedCharacters[40];  //created array to catch unwanted input
        unwantedCharacters[0] = 0;    //initialzed first byte of array to zero

        while (1)
        {
            printf("-> ");
            scanf("%d", &number);
            gets(unwantedCharacters);        //collect what scanf() wouldn't from the input stream
            if (unwantedCharacters[0] == 0)  //if unwantedCharacters array is empty (the user's input is valid)
            {
                if (number > 0) p++;
                else if (number < 0) n++;
                else break; /* 0 given */
            }
            else
                printf("Err...\n");
        }
        printf("Read %d positive and %d negative numbers\n", p, n);
        return 0;
    }