Question

I have written this program which changes the entered height (in cm) to feet and inches. When I run it, the result keeps coming up without stopping. Does anyone know why?

#include <stdio.h>

int main (void)
{
  float heightcm;
  float feet;
  float inch;

  printf("Enter height in centimeters to convert \n");
  scanf("%f", &heightcm);

  while (heightcm > 0)
  {
   feet = heightcm*0.033;
   inch = heightcm*0.394;

   printf("\n %0.1f cm = %0.2f feet and %0.2f inches \n", heightcm,feet,inch);
  }
 return 0;
}

Answer 1

You made an infinite loop:

  while (heightcm > 0)   // if user enters a height > 0 we get in
  {
   feet = heightcm*0.033; // update feet 
   inch = heightcm*0.394; // update inches

   // print the result
   printf("\n %0.1f cm = %0.2f feet and %0.2f inches \n", heightcm,feet,inch); 
  }

No where in the loop is heightcm changed, which means that it’s always > 0 and your function will loop forever and never terminate. A if check makes more sense here:

  if (heightcm > 0)   // if user enters a height > 0 we get in
  {
   feet = heightcm*0.033; // update feet 
   ...

Or you can use your while loop and keep asking for more input:

  while (heightcm > 0)
  {
    printf("Enter height in centimeters to convert \n");
    scanf("%f", &heightcm);
    ...

Which is probably what you were going for (loop until the user enters a non-positive number)