scan

n : the act of scanning; systematic examination of a prescribed

region; "he made a thorough scan of the beach with his

binoculars"

v 1: examine minutely or intensely

2: examine hastily [syn: {skim}, {rake}, {glance over}, {run

down}]

3: glance over or read superficially

4: make a wide, sweeping search of; "The beams scanned the

night sky"

5: conform to a metrical pattern; of poetic verse

6: move a light beam over; in electronics, to reproduce an

image

7: read metrically; "scan verses"

8: obtain data from magnetic tapes; "This dictionary can be

read by the computer" [syn: {read}]

scanf

The {C} library routine that reads data from the {standard

input} {stream} {stdin} into the locations given by each entry

in its argument list. The first argument is a format string

which controls interpretation of the input and each subsequent

argument points to a variable with a type that corresponds to

a type specifier in the format-string.

{Unix manual page}: scanf(3).

(1995-02-23)