Character Counting in C

Here we are taking baby steps in c. Lets learn how to count the number of characters entered through stdin (standard input like keyboard).

We will try to code the program similar to my earlier posts.

 #include <stdio.h>  
 int main()  
 {  
   int c,count=0;  
   printf("Start your input \n");  
   c = getchar();  
   while(c != '\n')  
   {  
     putchar(c);  
     c = getchar();  
     ++count;  
   }  
   printf("\n Number of characters entered = %d\n",count);  
 }  

Though we can code above snippet in much simpler form, I have used my earlier programs code to count the number of characters in c.

From above program,

• In a while loop, we take input from stdin
• output the characater to stdin
• read character
• pre-increment the count value
• Continue in the while loop till new line
• When new line is encountered, we print the stdout and number of characters

Output of this program is below

 mrtechpathi@mrtechpathi:~/Study/C/K_and_R$ ./a.out   
 Enter Ctrl+C is to exit  
 Start your input   
 just a single line input  
 just a single line input  
  Number of characters entered = 24  

Note that we are printing the characters and number of characters when new line or carriage return is encountered.