Question

I’m new at programming, new on this site too, so hello…
I’m attempting to obtain a running total for integers one thru 10, but I’m getting gibberish answers and I just can’t understand why.
To attempt to find out what was going wrong, I added the

printf(" running total is %d\n", sum);

line to the while loop, but just got more of the same nonsense…
please see http://codepad.org/UxEw6pFU for the results….

I’m sure this has a blindingly obvious solution…I’m just too dumb to see it though!
anyone know what I’m doing wrong?

#include <stdio.h>


int main(void)      {

    int count,sum,square;           
    int upto=10;                 

    count = 0;                
    square = 0;                 

    while (++count < upto)   {   
        square = count * count;
        printf("square of %d is %d",count,square);     
        sum =square + sum;
        printf(" running total is %d\n", sum);
    }

    printf("overall total of squares of integers 1 thru 10 is %d\n", sum);           

    return 0;
}

Answer 1

You need to initialize sum to 0.

EDIT As others have stated after the fact, the reason you’re seeing garbage is because sum isn’t initialized and contains whatever is in memory. It can be anything, and your use of it with sum = square + sum is going to add square to the uninitialized value.