Using " " in scanf() in C

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Answer 1

An ' ' - or any whitespace character - in the format string consumes an entire (possibly empty) sequence of whitespace characters in the input. So the scanf only returns when it encounters the next non-whitespace character, or the end of the input stream (e.g. when the input is redirected from a file and its end is reached, or after you closed stdin with Ctrl-D).