getc Vs getchar Vs Scanf for reading a character from stdin
Question
Of the below three functions:
getc getchar & scanf
which is the best one for reading a character from stdin and why?
Are there any known disadvantages or limitations for any of these functions which makes one better than the other?
Solution
If you simply want to read a single character from stdin, then getchar()
is the appropriate choice. If you have more complicated requirements, then getchar()
won't be sufficient.
getc()
allows you to read from a different stream (say, one opened withfopen()
);scanf()
allows you to read more than just a single character at a time.
The most common error when using getchar()
is to try and use a char
variable to store the result. You need to use an int
variable, since the range of values getchar()
returns is "a value in the range of unsigned char
, plus the single negative value EOF
". A char
variable doesn't have sufficient range for this, which can mean that you can confuse a completely valid character return with EOF
. The same applies to getc()
.
OTHER TIPS
from Beej's Guide to C Programming
All of these functions in one way or another, read a single character from the console or from a FILE. The differences are fairly minor, and here are the descriptions:
getc() returns a character from the specified FILE. From a usage standpoint, it's equivalent to the same fgetc() call, and fgetc() is a little more common to see. Only the implementation of the two functions differs.
fgetc() returns a character from the specified FILE. From a usage standpoint, it's equivalent to the same getc() call, except that fgetc() is a little more common to see. Only the implementation of the two functions differs.
Yes, I cheated and used cut-n-paste to do that last paragraph.
getchar() returns a character from stdin. In fact, it's the same as calling getc(stdin).