Agreed. My first instinct was the same: *scanf is never the right tool for pretty much any job. I learned this 20+ years ago. As far as I'm concerned it should

Agreed. My first instinct was the same: *scanf is never the right tool for pretty much any job. I learned this 20+ years ago. As far as I'm concerned it should have been considered deprecated along with gets; it was considered dangerous in the early 90s and probably before. Not sure why people are still using it in the 2000s+.