Home/ Questions/Q 8507685
In Process

The Archive Base Latest Questions

Editorial Team
  • 0
Asked: 2026-06-11T02:56:24+00:00

I am using fgets() to get user input, and then I parse it into

  • 0

I am using fgets() to get user input, and then I parse it into a double using sscanf(). Here is my example code:

int menuItem = 0;
char input[3];
printf("Enter valid menu item"); //values are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and -1
fgets(input, sizeof input, stdin);
sscanf(input, "%d", &menuItem);

The error occurs if the user enters 3 digits (invalid input, and I want to handle it accordingly), it skips my next fgets() by automatically placing the third digit as the next input. For example, if the user inters 123, it will now skip the next fgets and use the value 3 as the input. How can I clear this, or at most, only read 1 digit (but still being able to handle -1).

Share

Leave an answer

You must login to add an answer.

Need An Account,

1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Why don’t you just make your input array larger? Like 50 bytes… If the user enters that many, they are idiots and deserve strange behaviour =)

    This is of course inelegant, but putting it in perspective, you are probably not writing industrial-strength code here. You just want to fix a silly bug, and this is the simplest solution.

    [edit]

    In case you are confused as to why I suggested this. Your input array is only large enough to hold 2 values, plus a null-terminator. So obviously, you want it to be large enough that you can be sure the user entered a single choice and not two choices

    • 0