C - fscanf Mixed Numbers and Static Text

Question

I am trying to read a file formatted in this general way:

Text Description: 12
Description2: 1
More descriptive things: 6

And I would like to read the numbers 12, 1, and 6 into variables.

I have tried code like this:

fscanf(fptr, "Text Description:%d",&desc1);
fscanf(fptr, "Description2:%d",&desc2);
fscanf(fptr, "More descriptive things:%d",&desc3);

But for some reason only the first variable is being populated. Does anyone know why this is the case?

Answer 1

Add space at the beginning of the string format to avoid the new line problems

fscanf(fptr, " Text Description:%d",&desc1);
fscanf(fptr, " Description2:%d",&desc2);
fscanf(fptr, " More descriptive things:%d",&desc3);

Answer 2

You aren't reading the newline once you've processed the 12, so the other two calls are finding that instead of the string or integer and therefore failing. You can use a space in the next fscanf call (which consumes all whitespace characters preceding the string you want to match). Alternatively you can consume it with a call to fgetc , as long as each line ends immediately with a linefeed, eg

fscanf(fptr, "Text Description:%d",&desc1);
fgetc(fptr); // drop the next character
fscanf(fptr, "Description2:%d",&desc2);

Dropping all stream input after the integer and up to the next '\\n' can be done with a loop instead:

while (fgetc(fptr) != '\n')
   ;