C - Creating an array of character arrays

Question

I am trying to make an array of character Arrays. The program will read in sentences and store the sentences in a character array, and then that character array will be stored in another array. After reading numerous websites and Stack Over Flow pages I think it can be done like this. The program breaks when trying to store my character array into another array, so i'm not sure how to correct my code.

#include <stdio.h>
#include <math.h>
#include <time.h>


int main(int ac, char *av[])
{
    int size;          //number of sentences
    char strings[100];// character array to hold the sentences
    char temp;


    printf("Number of Strings: ");
    scanf_s("%d", &size);   // read in the number of sentences to type
    char **c = malloc(size); //array of character arrays

    int i = 0;
    int j = 0;
    while (i < size)       //loop for number of sentences
    {
        printf("Enter string %i ",(i+1));
        scanf_s("%c", &temp); // temp statement to clear buffer
        fgets(strings, 100, stdin);
        // **** this next line breaks the program
        c[i][j] = strings;   // store sentence into array of character arrays
        j++;
        i++;
}
printf("The first character in element 0 is: %d\n", c[0][0]);

system("PAUSE");
return 0;
}

You cannot store a character array in another character array. You can store a character array in an array (I adapted your question's text accordingly). — Paul Ogilvie
– Paul Ogilvie, Commented Mar 9, 2018 at 18:00

Paul Ogilvie · Accepted Answer · 2018-03-09 17:58:09Z

2

Al you need to do is allocate the memory for the string just read and copy the string:

c[i][j] = strings;   // replace this with:

c[i]= malloc(strlen(strings)+1);
strcpy(c[i],strings);

answered Mar 9, 2018 at 17:58

Paul Ogilvie

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Comments

user2736738 · Accepted Answer · 2018-03-09 18:01:26Z

1

Sadly char **c is not array of characters arrays. But this will properly allocate a 2d array dynamically if you follow

char (*c)[SIZE];

And then doing this

c = malloc(sizeof(char[LEN][SIZE]));

Then you do what you are trying to do.

for(size_t i = 0; i < LEN; i++){
    if(fgets(c[i],SIZE,stdin)){
    ...
    }
}

Or you can do it like this

char **c = malloc(LEN);
..
for(size_t i = 0; i < LEN; i++){
   c[i] = malloc(SIZE);
   ...
}

But again c is nothing but jagged array of characters.

Check the return value of malloc and free the dynamically allocated memory when you are done working with it.

edited Mar 9, 2018 at 18:01

answered Mar 9, 2018 at 17:55

user2736738

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Abhishek Saini · Accepted Answer · 2018-03-09 18:21:57Z

0

Listen dude, Do you want to store the words in the character array and then store this in another array. It is what you want ? If yes then you can do the following.

Use stdlib by using # include <stdlib.h> . This lets you use string functions directly. Now read every word as a string and make array of strings. So now if you number of strings is n, define an array for that as string my_array[n] and scan each word using scanf("%s",&my_array [i]). In this way you will get an array of strings.

answered Mar 9, 2018 at 18:21

Abhishek Saini

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