Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!network!ucsd!orion.cf.uci.edu!uci-ics!zardoz!ccicpg!cci632!rit!tropix!moscom!ur-valhalla!uhura.cc.rochester.edu!rochester!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!uxc.cso.uiuc.edu!uxc.cso.uiuc.edu!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!uxe.cso.uiuc.edu!mcdonald From: mcdonald@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu Newsgroups: comp.lang.c Subject: Re: In defense of scanf() (Re: Re^2 Message-ID: <225800187@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu> Date: 22 Jul 89 15:07:00 GMT References: <824@cbnewsl.ATT.COM> Lines: 22 Nf-ID: #R:cbnewsl.ATT.COM:824:uxe.cso.uiuc.edu:225800187:000:1035 Nf-From: uxe.cso.uiuc.edu!mcdonald Jun 17 10:07:00 1989 Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Problems with scanf (and strtok) I once (and only once!) wrote a "commercial" program. It is for use by dumb students (well, relatively - they have made it half way through a Junior level Quantum Mechanics course and survived many 3 dimensional PDE's, Hermite, Legendre, and Associated Laguerre polynomials and mathematical induction) and watched them, some of whom, still, in 1985, had never touched a computer before. I finally gave up trying to use ANY canned input routine, and wrote my own that scanned the input character by character, giving a hopefully appropriate, meaningful, error message as they typed the offending character (not requiring a carriage return before giving a message.) For programs that only I use, I use scanf all the time. For programs I buy, I like quick and efficient error messages. MAybe we need a new acronym: WYDIIWYSI: When you do it is when you see it! It still bothers me to see a C compiler issue 100 error messages when the program contains only one bug! Doug McDonald