c - Reading newline from previous input when reading from keyboard with scanf()

Question

This was supposed to be very simple, but I'm having trouble to read successive inputs from the keyboard.

Here's the code:

#include <string.h>
#include <stdio.h>

int main()
{
    char string[200];
    char character;
    printf ("write something: ");
    scanf ("%s", string);
    printf ("%s", string);
    printf ("
write a character: ");
    scanf ("%c", &character);
    printf ("
Character %c  Correspondent number: %d
", character, character);

    return 0;
}

What is happening

When I enter a string (e.g.: computer), the program reads the newline (' ') and puts it in character. Here is how the display looks like:

 write something: computer
 computer
 Character:
    Correspondent number: 10

Moreover, the program does not work for strings with more than one word. How could I overcome these problems?

Answer 1

First scanf read the entered string and left behind in the input buffer. Next call to scanf read that and store it to character.
Try this

scanf (" %c", &characte);   
     // ^A space before %c in scanf can skip any number of white space characters. 

Program will not work for strings more than one character because scanf stops reading once find a white space character. You can use fgets instead

 fgets(string, 200, stdin);