Reading a single character in C

Question

I'm trying to read a character from the console (inside a while loop). But it reads more than once.

Input:

a

Output:

char : a  char : char : '

Code:

while(..)
{
    char in;
    scanf("%c",&in);
}

How can i read only 'a'?

Answer 1

scanf("%c",&in);

leaves a newline which is consumed in the next iteration.

Change it to:

scanf(" %c",&in); // Notice the whitespace in the format string

which tells scanf to ignore whitespaces.

OR

scanf(" %c",&in);
getchar(); // To consume the newline 

Answer 2

To read just one char, use getchar instead:

int c = getchar();
if (c != EOF)
  printf("%c\n", c);