System.in.read giving a number when no entry has been made

[Tyler Knecht]

This is just the start of my program, I am curios as to why when I run the program and just press enter, the result I get is "You typed: 13" when the entry is blank. It's baffling me.

import java.io.*;
public class birthYear
{
public static void main(String[] args) throws java.io.IOException
{
System.out.println("Please type your birth year.");
int x = (int)System.in.read();

System.out.print("You typed: " + x);

}
}

[Joanne Neal]

When you hit return either a CR or CR/LF is generated (depending on your OS). System.in.read() reads the next character from the input and you then cast it to an int which will give you the ASCII value of the character. The ASCII value of a CR is 13.