Serial.flush() in arduino

Question

I am new to Arduino and I have the following:

int     delaynum;
char    cval[12];

void setup()
{
 Serial.begin(9600);
 Serial.print("Enter Number");
 Serial.flush();

 int i=0;
 while(i<12)
 {
  if(Serial.available()>0)
  {
    char ch=Serial.read();
    if(ch>='0'&&ch<='9')
    {
      cval[i]=ch;
      i++;
    }
    else
    {
      cval[i]=0;
      delaynum=atoi(cval);
      break;
    }
  }
 }
}
void loop()
{
   Serial.println(delaynum);
   exit(0);
} 

The code output in virtual bread board:(i Entered 100)

But when i remove Serial.flush() The output like (i Entered 100)

I am Expecting the output:

Enter Number (I want to enter number 100 after the output)

100

Why the code not working ?

I am using Arduino IDE with virtual bread board(ATMega328p)

Answer 1

Not knowing what virtual breadboard does on a normal Arduino it would do the following:
Serial.flush() clears the buffer and this needs some time normaly you wait minimum for around 100 ms to write/read to that buffer again.
As your code runs in setup (so just once) the serial is not available as its still flushing and so your result.
As the name setup says this should only be used to setup HW/SW but not to run routines as you may get all sorts of weird results.
If you use "\n" aka newline terminators in your communication you can go for them and flushing would be only necessary if the connection is interrupted and you have to resend data.
EDIT

Waits for the transmission of outgoing serial data to complete.

If you send a character, it is placed in a buffer for transmission. It takes time for each character to be sent because serial is slow. Once it is in the buffer, it will be sent automatically in the background while the program immediately moves on to the next statement. This is done so the program won't waste time waiting for characters to be sent.

flush() is a way to wait for it to be sent, instead of immediately moving on in the user program.

So after calling flush() you can be sure that all data has been sent, and the buffer is empty. So in your case where you placed it it makes no sense.