Question

I was confused by the getchar() function, so I searched this great website and read all the relative topics and read about getchar() in K&R book. But when I ran the code, typed a word on the console screen, and hit enter, nothing happened. I expected the number of characters to be displayed.

#include<stdio.h>
int main(void)//doesn't work??
{
int c ;
int count ;

while ( ( c = getchar() ) != EOF )
   count ++ ;

printf( "%d characters\n" , count ) ;
return 0;
}

Answer 1

I think its because you are pressing enter and expecting the loop to stop.

The condition

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

will only be false on Windows when you press Ctrl + Z.

On UNIX it is Ctrl + D I think, so it should be Ctrl + D if you are using Ubuntu.

If you want the loop to stop on pressing enter try checking for the '\n' character instead.