Alphabetically Ordering an array of words
- by Genesis
I'm studying C on my own in preparation for my upcoming semester of school and was wondering what I was doing wrong with my code so far.
If Things look weird it is because this is part of a much bigger grab bag of sorting functions I'm creating to get a sense of how to sort numbers,letters,arrays,and the like! I'm basically having some troubles with the manipulation of strings in C currently.
Also, I'm quite limited in my knowledge of C at the moment!
My main Consists of this:
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
int numbers[10];
int size;
int main(void){
setvbuf(stdout,NULL,_IONBF,0); //This is magical code that allows me to input.
int wordNumber;
int lengthOfWord = 50;
printf("How many words do you want to enter: ");
scanf("%i", &wordNumber);
printf("%i\n",wordNumber);
char words[wordNumber][lengthOfWord];
printf("Enter %i words:",wordNumber);
int i;
for(i=0;i<wordNumber+1;i++){ //+1 is because my words[0] is blank.
fgets(&words[i], 50, stdin);
}
for(i=1;i<wordNumber+1;i++){ // Same as the above comment!
printf("%s", words[i]); //prints my words out!
}
alphabetize(words,wordNumber); //I want to sort these arrays with this function.
}
My sorting "method" I am trying to construct is below! This function is seriously flawed, but I'd thought I'd keep it all to show you where my mind was headed when writing this.
void alphabetize(char a[][],int size){ // This wont fly.
size = size+1;
int wordNumber;
int lengthOfWord;
char sortedWords[wordNumber][lengthOfWord]; //In effort for the for loop
int i;
int j;
for(i=1;i<size;i++){ //My effort to copy over this array for manipulation
for(j=1;j<size;j++){
sortedWords[i][j] = a[i][j];
}
}
//This should be kinda what I want when ordering words alphabetically, right?
for(i=1;i<size;i++){
for(j=2;j<size;j++){
if(strcmp(sortedWords[i],sortedWords[j]) > 0){
char* temp = sortedWords[i];
sortedWords[i] = sortedWords[j];
sortedWords[j] = temp;
}
}
}
for(i=1;i<size;i++){
printf("%s, ",sortedWords[i]);
}
}
I guess I also have another question as well...
When I use fgets() it's doing this thing where I get a null word for the first spot of the array. I have had other issues recently trying to scanf() char[] in certain ways specifically spacing my input word variables which "magically" gets rid of the first null space before the character. An example of this is using scanf() to write "Hello" and getting " Hello" or " ""Hello"...
Appreciate any thoughts on this, I've got all summer to study up so this doesn't need to be answered with haste! Also, thank you stack overflow as a whole for being so helpful in the past. This may be my first post, but I have been a frequent visitor for the past couple of years and it's been one of the best places for helpful advice/tips.
