C Language and Libraries Help (clang.hlp) (Table of Contents; Topic list)
Important Notice
The pages on this site contain documentation for very old MS-DOS software, purely for historical purposes. If you're looking for up-to-date documentation, particularly for programming, you should not rely on the information found here, as it will be woefully out of date.
scanf Type Characters
                                             Up Contents Index Back
─────Run-Time Library───────────────────────────────────────────────────────
 
     The scanf type characters and their meanings are described below:
 
     Character   Type of Input Expected         Type of Argument
 
     d           Decimal integer                Pointer to int
 
     o           Octal integer                  Pointer to int
 
     x, X        Hexadecimal integer            Pointer to int
 
     i           Decimal, hexadecimal,          Pointer to int
                 or octal integer
 
     u           Unsigned decimal integer       Pointer to unsigned int
 
     e, E        Floating-point value           Pointer to float
     f           consisting of an optional
     g, G        sign (+ or -), a series of
                 one or more decimal digits
                 containing a decimal
                 point, and an optional
                 exponent ("e" or "E")
                 followed by an optionally
                 signed integer value
 
     c           Character. White-space         Pointer to char
                 characters that are
                 ordinarily skipped are read
                 when c is specified; to read
                 the next non-white-space
                 character, use %1s.
 
     s           String                         Pointer to character
                                                array large enough for
                                                input field plus a
                                                terminating null
                                                character (\0),
                                                which is automatically
                                                appended
 
     n           No input read from stream      Pointer to int, into
                 or buffer                      which is stored the
                                                number of characters
                                                successfully read from
                                                the stream or buffer
                                                up to that point in
                                                the current call to
                                                scanf
 
     p           Value in the form              Pointer to far
                 xxxx:yyyy, where the           pointer to void
                 digits <x> and <y> are
                 uppercase hexadecimal
                 digits
 
     The D and U type characters that were previously used to read in
     long ints and long unsigneds, respectively, are no longer
     supported.
 
     To store a string without storing a terminating null character
     (\0), use the specification %nc, where <n> is a decimal integer.
     In this case, the c type character indicates that the argument is
     a pointer to a character array. The next <n> characters are read
     from the input stream into the specified location, and no null
     character (\0) is appended. If <n> is not specified, the default
     value for it is 1.
                                    -♦-