while ((c = getchar()) != EOF) Not terminating

Question

I\'ve been reading \"The C Programming Language\" and I got to this part of inputs and outputs.

I\'ve read other threads saying that the console doesn\'t recognize e

Answer 1

    /* This program will calculate the number of blanks, tabs and new line in a text stream */

#include <stdio.h>

main () 
{
    int c,nl = 0, blank = 0, tab = 0; //Newline, blanks and tabs.
    while ((c = getchar()) != EOF) {
        if (c == '\n')
            ++nl;
        else if (c == '\t')
            ++tab;
        else if (c == ' ')
            ++blank;
}
    printf("Tabs = %d\nBlanks = %d\nNewLine = %d",tab, blank, nl);
}

I wrote this following code and it works properly on Ubuntu. As it is similar to what you wrote, I tried the code and Ctrl-D is working properly in UNIX.

I tested the following code and have realized that if we input \n in text stream it will not increase the counter of the new line, same goes for a \t tab. Only pressing enter for new line and pressing tab for tab is counted by the counter this is a point to be noted.

This is happening because pressing enter actually puts a newline character which is a single character whereas entering \n is treated as differently and they are actually two characters.

I thought this will add value to this question so I explained this thing too. Thanks.

Answer 2

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


}

Then use Ctrl+Z or F6 on Windows

Following will wait for either a \n or EOF, which comes first

while((c = getchar()) != '\n' && c != EOF){

}