I cannot GET THIS TO WORK.. (Saving a STRING into an array...)

[Lej]

All I want to do is ask the user to enter words, then I bubble sort them alphabetically, then print them back out. THE PROBLEM IS.. When I try to store "str" into the words array, idk what's happening... When I print them out, it's only saving the LAST word I typed into every array location..

#include "stdafx.h"
#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>

#define MAXLENGTH 15
#define MAXWORDS 3

int _tmain(int argc, _TCHAR* argv[])
{

char str[80];
char *words[25];
char *hold;
int j;
int i;
int wordcount=0;

while (wordcount<MAXWORDS){

	  printf("Enter a word: ");
		 fgets(str, MAXLENGTH, stdin);

  /* remove newline, if present */
  i = strlen(str)-1;
  if( str[i] == '\n') 
      str[i] = '\0';

  printf("%s\n",str);

  words[wordcount]=str;

	wordcount++;

}

printf("%d words.\n",wordcount);

for(i=1;i<wordcount;++i)
	for(j=wordcount-1;j>=i;--j)
		if (strcmp(words[j-1],words[j])>0){
		hold=words[j-1];
		words[j-1]=words[j];
		words[j]=hold;
		}


for(i=0;i<wordcount;i++)
	printf("%s \n",words[i]);

	return 0;
}

[Disch]

char*s are not strings. They are pointers.

A pointer does not contain string data. It points to the start of existing string data.

In this case, you are assigning your words[] array so that all entries point to the same string data: 'str'.

If you want to make a copy of the string data you need to do 2 things:

1) you need to make your words[] array actually be able to hold string data (not just a pointer to existing data)

2) you need to strcpy() the string data, not just assign a pointer.

char str[80];
char words[25][80];  // <-

//...

strcpy( words[wordcount], str );

[Lej]

If I do that, then none of my other stuff works... I don't understand why it's so hard to save a string into an array.. C is very difficult compared to other languages...

All I want to do is ask the user to enter strings 1 line at a time, and have them saved in an array.

Then sort the strings alphabetically in the array.

Then print it.

That's all!!.. I have the sorting working, I just don't have the storing the strings from the user into the array!

[Disch]

You have the same problem with 'hold'. Once you fix that problem with 'words' and 'hold', your program works just fine for me.

I don't understand why it's so hard to save a string into an array

If you were using strings, you wouldn't be having the problem. But you're not using strings, you're using pointers. Remember that pointers are not strings. A char* is not a string, it's a pointer.

The confusion here seems to be coming from a misunderstanding of how pointers work.

C is very difficult compared to other languages

I don't disagree.

I have the sorting working

You actually don't, because your sorting is incorrectly using pointers instead of strings.

[Shinigami]

char is not string, it is c_string. If you want to use real string you use
string words[25];
in this case you can store to 25 words

[Disch]

Well it looks like he's using C, not C++. So std::string is not an option.

But yes that would be easier.