Some noob array problem in C

[decypher]

Anyone want to flex some C programming muscles? Do me a big favour by solving this problem.

I need to write a program that accepts three values in one line. At the beginning, I thought a simple scanf with three integer inputs would do the trick. But no, the question had a twist to it: if the user inputted -1 as first (and only) value, the loop will break.

Right now, I have this line.

scanf("%d %d %d", &a, &b, &c);

As for the -1 rule, I tried this right after the scanf line.

if(a==-1) {
break;
}

The thing is, when I run the program, everything worked fine except that I had to complete the line with three values to end the program. I had to type:

-1 b c

where b and c are two random integers by the user.

How do I code it so that the program will know to break the loop by reading only the first value and ignoring the subsequent values?

Any help is appreciated. Thanks!

[strawroot]

i would really like to help... but.....

[peaz]

what you need to do is to create a routine then checks on each keystroke. every number is escaped by a 'space' that's how u can assign a number to the variable. the trick here is that you will be getting chars and thus you'll need to convert it to an integer once you've recieved the 'space' char. Repeat that 3 times using a for loop. and for the first loop, check if its a "-1" if so, then break the whole routine.

Try and see if you get what I mean. if you still need help I'll write up part of the program for you. No fun if I gave u everything now.

[decypher]

A parser. String Tokenizer and casting? God damn. If this were Java I wouldn't need to go on my knees. Will try that idea, thanks peaz.

[djspinnet]

Originally Posted by decypher

A parser. String Tokenizer and casting? God damn. If this were Java I wouldn't need to go on my knees. Will try that idea, thanks peaz.

casting?

oh, casting is easy peasy. ever heard of atoi?

[decypher]

oh ya atoi. adui. i threw away C when I studied Java.

gdmit.