fscanf and newline character

Question

I have fscanf to read lines of setting from a configuration file. Those settings have strictly predefined format which looks like

name1=option1;
name2=option         


        

Answer 1

This will work:

fscanf(configuration,"%[^=]=%[^;];%[^\n]",name,option,dummy);

You will have to consume the new line character.Otherwise,the newline is left in the input stream.

Answer 2

Just add space at the end of the format string:

"%[^=]=%[^;]; "

This will eat all whitespace characters, including new-lines.

Quotation from cplusplus.com:

Whitespace character: the function will read and ignore any whitespace characters encountered before the next non-whitespace character (whitespace characters include spaces, newline and tab characters -- see isspace). A single whitespace in the format string validates any quantity of whitespace characters extracted from the stream (including none).

Answer 3

An alternative is to use fgets() to read the entire line into a string, then use sscanf(). This has an advantage in debugging in that you can see exactly what data the function is working on.