From: Hal Fulton <hal9000@...>
Date: 2006-06-01T11:58:55+09:00
Subject: Re: A newbie question about scanf

Jeff Pritchard wrote:
> As a fellow newbie, let me just say that this splat business is all very 
> interesting, but I get cornfused one step earlier.  You all seem to 
> think it is quite ordinary that this scanf method returns an array. 
> What's up with that?  If it gathers one line of input, why then, 'o why 
> doesn't it return a string object????

scanf typically returns multiple objects -- it reads a string and
returns strings, integers, floats, whatever.

The case where you're only reading one item is the oddball
case. I guess it would be possible to just "return the item" --
but it's more natural to return an array always.

Hal