Why doesn't getchar() recognise return as EOF

Question

I have a small snippet of code below that I'm running using PellesC.

When the code is executed and I've typed a few characters into the console, I press enter.

Can you explain to me why the printf("%ld\n", nc); line doesn't seem to get executed? As no output is written to the console.

#include <stdio.h>

int main(void)
{
    long nc = 0;

    while(getchar() != EOF)
    {
        ++nc;
    }

    printf("%ld\n", nc);
}

I've decided to learn C thoroughly using the K&R book and I'm embarrassed to say this rather elementary example has me stumped.

Answer 1

ENTER is written in code as '\n'. Try this

#include <stdio.h>

int main(void)
{
    long nc = 0;

    /* count chars, except for ENTER */
    while(getchar() != '\n')
    {
        ++nc;
    }

    printf("%ld\n", nc);
    return 0;
}

Answer 2

"Press enter"? The cycle in your code continues to iterate until it reaches the end-of-file marker. "Pressing enter" will not result in EOF. If you want to simulate EOF from the keyboard, consult the documentation for your terminal. In Windows, for example, you'd have to hit Ctrl+Z to generate EOF.