Reading character with scanf() - c

Question

This code is for game of craps.
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdbool.h>
#include <time.h>
int roll_dice(void);
bool play_game(void);
int main()
{
int i, ch,win = 0,lose = 0;
bool flag;
srand((unsigned)time(NULL));
do
{
flag = play_game();
if(flag)
{
printf("You win!");
win++;
}
else
{
printf("You lose!");
lose++;
}
printf("\n\nPlay again(Y/N)? ");
scanf("%c", &ch);
ch = getchar();
printf("\n");
}while(ch == 'Y' || ch == 'y');
printf("\nWins: %d Losses: %d",win,lose);
return 0;
}
int roll_dice(void)
{
return rand()%6 + rand()%6 + 2;
}
bool play_game(void)
{
int sum = roll_dice();
printf("You rolled: %d\n", sum);
if(sum == 7 || sum == 11)
return 1;
else if(sum == 2 || sum == 3 || sum == 12)
return 0;
else
{
int point = sum;
printf("Your point is: %d\n", point);
do
{
sum = roll_dice();
printf("You rolled: %d\n", sum);
if(sum == 7)
return 0;
}while(point != sum);
return 1;
}
}
I have problem only with code snippet
printf("\n\nPlay again(Y/N)? ");
scanf("%c", &ch);
ch = getchar();
printf("\n");
I have used, because it terminates after one iteration whatever user input Y or N. I thought I am doing wrong by placing ch = getchar() to eat up \n, I removed it and placed a space before conversion specifier and replaced it by " %c" which also did't work.When I replaced the conversion specifier by %d it works fine.
Is anything going wrong with this?
I visited this post and it is saying same thing I did.

Answer 1

The posted code has undefined behaviour because ch is of type int and the format specifier %c must match a char.
When I replaced the conversion specifier %d it works fine.
When you switch to %d the scanf() fails, because Y or y is not an int, so no input is consumed (apart from leading whitespace which discards the new line character on subsequent iterations of the loop) and the subsequent ch = getchar() actually reads the user entered character, and the code works by fluke. Always check the return value of scanf(), which returns the number of assignments made.

Answer 2

You convert the character with scanf(), and then overwrite it with getchar() immediately afterwards. I wouldn't expect it to work, unless you type "yy" before typing ENTER, but then your second confirmation would fail.
BTW, use the space in " %c".

Answer 3

scanf("%c", &ch);
ch = getchar();
And that's how you lost the previous char stored in ch. How about
ch = fgetc(stdin);
while (fgetc(stdin) != '\n')
;
instead?

Answer 4

printf("Play again? ");
scanf(" %c", &char);
this code works for me. The project is from K.N.King's "C programming : A modern approach" book. I met with this problem before and had the same problem. On page 224 there is a guess.c example project which includes exactly the same command "ask" ("play again"). And author used scanf(" %c", &command); (he used command instead of ch) and it did work. I remember I used it during the "game of craps" project but it did not work. Probably I missed something.
Overall, the expression above 100% does work.