Newline character is not consumed in typical scanf call

When this program

#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>

int main(void) {
    int num = 0;
    char str[128], *lf;

    scanf("%d", &num);
    fgets(str, sizeof(str), stdin);

    if ((lf = strchr(str, '\n')) != NULL) *lf = '\0';
    printf("%d \"%s\"\n", num, str);
    return 0;
}

is executed with this input

42
life

the output will be 42 "" instead of expected 42 "life".

This is because a newline character after 42 is not consumed in the call of scanf() and it is consumed by fgets() before it reads life. Then, fgets() stop reading before reading life.

To avoid this problem, one way that is useful when the maximum length of a line is known – when solving problems in online judge syste, for example – is avoiding using scanf() directly and reading all lines via fgets(). You can use sscanf() to parse the lines read.

#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>

int main(void) {
    int num = 0;
    char line_buffer[128] = "", str[128], *lf;

    fgets(line_buffer, sizeof(line_buffer), stdin);
    sscanf(line_buffer, "%d", &num);
    fgets(str, sizeof(str), stdin);

    if ((lf = strchr(str, '\n')) != NULL) *lf = '\0';
    printf("%d \"%s\"\n", num, str);
    return 0;
}

Another way is to read until you hit a newline character after using scanf() and before using fgets().

#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>

int main(void) {
    int num = 0;
    char str[128], *lf;
    int c;

    scanf("%d", &num);
    while ((c = getchar()) != '\n' && c != EOF);
    fgets(str, sizeof(str), stdin);

    if ((lf = strchr(str, '\n')) != NULL) *lf = '\0';
    printf("%d \"%s\"\n", num, str);
    return 0;
}

Found a mistake? Have a question or improvement idea? Let me know.

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