C36. C getchar and putchar

Reading and Writing Characters using getchar and putchar

C provides other ways to read and write single characters. In particular, we can use the getchar and putchar functions instead of calling scanf and printf. putchar writes a single character:

putchar(ch);

Each time getchar is called, it reads one character, which it returns. In order to save this character, we must use assignment to store it in a variable:

ch = getchar(); /* reads a character and stores it in ch */

getchar actually returns an int value rather than a char value (the reason will be discussed in later chapters). As a result, it's not unusual for a variable to have type int rather than char if it will be used to store a character read by getchar. Like scanf, getchar doesn't skip white-space characters as it reads.

Using getchar and putchar (rather than scanf and printf) saves lime when the program is executed, getchar and putchar are fast for two reasons. First, they're much simpler than scanf and printf, which are designed to read and write many kinds of data in a variety of formats. Second, getchar and putchar are usually implemented as macros for additional speed.

getchar has another advantage over scanf: because it returns the charac­ter that it reads, getchar lends itself to various C idioms, including loops that search for a character or skip over all occurrences of a character.