Why does spacing matter in this context?

[bnd]

Hi,

I'm still in the beginning stages of learning C so please bear with me.

I was wondering why my code would not read the user input for a string.

My code consisted of the following:

int main (void){

char userChar;
char userString[50];


printf("Enter character:\n");
scanf("%c", &userChar); //assigning input character//

printf("Enter string:\n");
scanf("%s", userString); //assigning input string//


printf("%c %s", userChar, userString);


return 0;
}


I wasn't getting an output for the userString unless I put a space in front of the %c for the scanf function, like so:

scanf(" %c", &userChar);
^

Only then would the userString print.

Would anyone be able to tell me what difference that little space makes???