Character Counter from "The C Programming Language" Not Working As I Expected
This line:
while (getchar() != EOF)
means that it keeps reading until the end of input — not until the end of a line. (EOF
is a special constant meaning "end of file".) You need to end input (probably with Ctrl-D or with Ctrl-Z) to see the total number of characters that were input.
If you want to terminate on EOL (end of line), replace EOF with '\n':
#include <stdio.h>
main(){
long nc;
nc = 0;
while (getchar() != '\n')
++nc;
printf("%ld\n", nc);
}
Enter is not EOF. Depending on your OS, Ctrl-D or Ctrl-Z should act as EOF on standard input.