TITLE: How to politely eat a newline (with pinkey extended, of course)


PROBLEM: dougbell@netcom.com (Douglas K. Bell)

   In the following code,  "gets" never executes!  Why ???
   If the "scanf" is removed, "gets" runs fine.  Why ????
   ( Argh... )   

   main()
   {
	   long serial_number;
	   char buf[80];

	   scanf( "%ld", &serial_number );

	   gets( buf );      <<<<<<<<<  NEVER EXECUTES !!!  WHY ?
   }


RESPONSE: jollie@odie.weeg.uiowa.edu (Jeffrey C. Ollie), 7 Dec 93

gets does execute.  The scanf will leave the next input as the first character
after the serial number.  This is probably '\n'.  When gets executes, it sees
a '\n' as it's first input, takes this to be the end of a line, and exits.

Add "%*[^\n]%*c" to the end of your format string.  This will eat everything up
intil the end of a line, and then eat the newline.