DATA INPUT & OUTPUT

DR. THERESA-SAMUELLE ADJAIDOO

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“ Testing leads to failure, and

failure leads to understanding.
BURT RUTAN ”

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OUTLINE • DATA INPUT/OUTPUT

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DATA INPUT/OUTPUT

 From the very first program, to some extent, it is

understood by what data output refers to; displaying
data to the user.
 The reverse; getting data from the user, can also be
described as data input.
 With the help of functions in the stdio.h file, these
operations are made possible.

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DATA INPUT/OUTPUT

 There are six main functions in the stdio.h that would be

of immense use in this course.
 They are: printf(), scanf(), putchar(), getchar(), puts()
and gets()
 The general syntax and mode of usage of each of
these would be explained in the following slides.

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PRINTF

 The printf() function, as seen already, writes output

data from the computer to a standard output device.
 This function can be used to output any combination of
numerical values, single characters and strings.
 Strings are simply a concatenation of characters.

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PRINTF

 The general syntax for using printf is :

printf(“control string”, arg1, arg2,…, argn);
where control string refers to a string containing certain formatting
information, and arg_1, arg_2,…, arg_n are arguments that represent the
individual output data items.

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PRINTF

 Control strings are also known as string modifiers/formatters/specifiers.

 While using printf(), these string formatters have the ability to specify how
values from variables are displayed.
 The next slide presents some of these control strings.

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CONTROL STRINGS

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PRINTF

 However, printf() statements do not always contain

control strings.
 For example, what was written in the first program.
printf(“Hello, World!\n”);
printf(“I am 50 years old”);

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PRINTF

 The above examples would print exactly what has been capsuled in the
quotation marks (together with the effect of any escape sequences).
 However, there are times we would want to print values that are stored in
variables (memory).
 To do so we would have to use control strings.

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PRINTF

 For example:
int age = 50; //the variable is age and the value stored is 50
printf(“%d \n”, age); // to print the value 50 as an integer
printf(“I am %d years old”, age); // printing the age from memory

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PRINTF

 For example:
int count = 4; //the variable is count and the value stored is 4
float weight = 90.61;
printf(“Angela who bought %d oranges weighs %g kilograms”,
count, weight);
// combining various variables in one print statement

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PRINTF

 In the last example, a number of variables were

combined in one printf() statement.
 It is important to take close notice of how the control
strings and their respective variables are ordered.
 Misplacing them would not produce the desired
output.

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PRINTF

 The control strings can also be used to specify the

length of value to be displayed as well as how many
decimal points a floating point has.
 Find out more on how these are done.

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SCANF

 Input data can be entered into the computer from a

standard input device by means of a C library function
by name scanf().
 This function can be used to input any combination of
numerical values, single characters and strings.

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SCANF

 The general syntax for using scanf is:

scanf(“control string”, arg_1, arg_2,…, arg_n);
where control string refers to a string containing certain
formatting information, and arg_1, arg_2,…, arg_n are
arguments that represent the individual input data items.

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SCANF

 A lot has already been said on control strings. So it’s

okay to start taking examples.
 Imagine if you were to take the age from a user. It can
be done doing the following.
int personAge;
scanf(“%d”, &personAge);

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SCANF

 We first declared the integer variable personAge which

would hold the person’s age.
 Then using the scanf() statement we patiently wait for
the person to enter the age and store the age in the
declared variable called personAge.
 So when the compiler gets to the line with the scanf()
statement it would keep blinking a cursor until the
person enters a value

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SCANF

 The entered value would be treated as an integer

because we specified %d as the control string.
 The entered value is stored in the variable personAge.
 Once stored it can always be retrieved later in the
program.

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& - THE “ADDRESS OF” OPERATOR

 You must have been wondering why we placed an

ampersand (&) before the variable personAge when
using the scanf statement.
 This ampersand is known as the “address of” operator
and it is used for accessing the address (memory
location) of the declared variable where we want to
store the value.

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& - THE “ADDRESS OF” OPERATOR

 Without the ampersand (&) the scanf statement would

not work as we want it to.
 The statement &personAge would provide the compiler
with the address of the variable personAge.
 This address of operator can also be used in the printf
statement to print out the memory addresses of
variables using the control string %p. More of this would
be covered later when treating the topic Pointers.

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SCANF – MULTIPLE USER INPUT

 There are times when there would be the need of

taking multiple user inputs.
 For example taking 3 exam scores from the user in order
to compute the average score.
 There are two ways of doing this. The next few slides
would demonstrate this.

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SCANF – MULTIPLE USER INPUT

 One way of getting it done is by writing the scanf

statement each time a value is to be taken. For
example:
float score_1, score_2, score_3;
scanf(“%g”, &score_1);
scanf(“%g”, &score_2);
scanf(“%g”, &score_3);

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SCANF – MULTIPLE USER INPUT

 Another way of getting it done is by writing the scanf

statement just once, while comma-separating the
arguments. For example:
float score_1, score_2, score_3;
scanf(“%g %g %g”, &score_1, &score_2, &score_3);
 It should however be noted that the control strings are
not comma-separated.

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GETCHAR AND PUTCHAR

 getchar() and putchar() are also functions in the

standard input and output header file which work
mainly with characters.
 getchar() is responsible for taking a character value
from a user (input) and putchar() is responsible for
displaying a character value to a user.

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GETCHAR AND PUTCHAR

 The syntax for getchar() is

declared character variable = getchar();
 For example
char choice = getchar();
 Since it is an input function, this would cause the
compiler to patiently wait while blinking a cursor until
the user enters a character value which would be
stored in the variable choice.

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GETCHAR AND PUTCHAR

 The syntax for putchar() is

putchar(character variable);
 For example
putchar(choice);
 Since it is an output function, this would cause the
compiler to display the character value which was
stored in the variable choice.

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GETS AND PUTS

 The gets() and puts() functions are also input and

output functions targeted mainly for string values.
 How they are used would be covered later when
treating the topic Strings.

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THE END

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C PROGRAMMING - DATA INPUT AND OUTPUT