c - What can I use for input conversion instead of scanf?

I have very frequently seen people discouraging others from using scanf and saying that there are better alternatives. However, all I end up seeing is either "don't use scanf" or "here's a correct format string", and never any examples of the "better alternatives" mentioned.

For example, let's take this snippet of code:

scanf("%c", &c);

This reads the whitespace that was left in the input stream after the last conversion. The usual suggested solution to this is to use:

scanf(" %c", &c);

or to not use scanf.

Since scanf is bad, what are some ANSI C options for converting input formats that scanf can usually handle (such as integers, floating-point numbers, and strings) without using scanf?