scanf()

Description

The C library function int scanf(const char *format, ...) reads formatted input from stdin.

Declaration

Following is the declaration for scanf() function.

int scanf(const char *format, ...)

Parameters

• format − This is the C string that contains one or more of the following items −

  Whitespace character, Non-whitespace character and Format specifiers. A format specifier will be like [=%[*][width][modifiers]type=] as explained below −

Sr.No.	Argument & Description
1	* This is an optional starting asterisk indicates that the data is to be read from the stream but ignored, i.e. it is not stored in the corresponding argument.
2	width This specifies the maximum number of characters to be read in the current reading operation.
3	modifiers Specifies a size different from int (in the case of d, i and n), unsigned int (in the case of o, u and x) or float (in the case of e, f and g) for the data pointed by the corresponding additional argument: h : short int (for d, i and n), or unsigned short int (for o, u and x) l : long int (for d, i and n), or unsigned long int (for o, u and x), or double (for e, f and g) L : long double (for e, f and g)
4	type A character specifying the type of data to be read and how it is expected to be read. See next table.

fscanf type specifiers

type	Qualifying Input	Type of argument
c	Single character: Reads the next character. If a width different from 1 is specified, the function reads width characters and stores them in the successive locations of the array passed as argument. No null character is appended at the end.	char *
d	Decimal integer: Number optionally preceded with a + or - sign	int *
e, E, f, g, G	Floating point: Decimal number containing a decimal point, optionally preceded by a + or - sign and optionally followed by the e or E character and a decimal number. Two examples of valid entries are -732.103 and 7.12e4	float *
o	Octal Integer:	int *
s	String of characters. This will read subsequent characters until a whitespace is found (whitespace characters are considered to be blank, newline and tab).	char *
u	Unsigned decimal integer.	unsigned int *
x, X	Hexadecimal Integer	int *

• additional arguments − Depending on the format string, the function may expect a sequence of additional arguments, each containing one value to be inserted instead of each %-tag specified in the format parameter, if any. There should be the same number of these arguments as the number of %-tags that expect a value.

Return Value

If successful, the total number of characters written is returned, otherwise a negative number is returned.

Example

The following example shows the usage of scanf() function.

#include <stdio.h>

int main () {
   char str1[20], str2[30];

   printf("Enter name: ");
   scanf("%s", str1);

   printf("Enter your website name: ");
   scanf("%s", str2);

   printf("Entered Name: %s\n", str1);
   printf("Entered Website:%s", str2);
   
   return(0);
}

Let us compile and run the above program that will produce the following result in interactive mode −

Enter name: admin
Enter your website name: www.tutorialspoint.com

Entered Name: admin
Entered Website: www.tutorialspoint.com