Implemented suggestions from affine. Considerably simplified the program by removing initialization for 'a' prior to loop entry; 'a' is now declared as the initialization expression for the loop, performing a getchar at the same time and preventing a null byte from being printed as the first character (even though this was not visible to the user).

KNR C/ex1_10_improved.c

@@ -4,9 +4,8 @@
  * as opposed to a series of if statements*/
 
 int main(){
-int a = 0; /*Initialized as 0 becasue getchar is called both on loop entry, and after every successful execution*/
 
-	for (a = 0; a != EOF; a = getchar()){
+	for (int a = getchar(); a != EOF; a = getchar()){
 		switch (a){
 			case '\t':
 				printf ("\\t");