K&R Exercise 1-9 (C)

Question

\"Write a program to copy its input to its output, replacing each string of one or more blanks by a single blank.\"

I\'m assuming by thi

Answer 1

Since relational operators in C produce integer values 1 or 0 (as explained earlier in the book), the logical expression "current character non-blank or previous character non-blank" can be simulated with integer arithmetic resulting in a shorter (if somewhat cryptic) code:

int c, p = EOF;
while ((c = getchar()) != EOF) {
    if ((c != ' ') + (p != ' ') > 0) putchar(c);
    p = c;
}

Variable p is initialized with EOF so that it has a valid non-blank value during the very first comparison.