How do I create an array of strings in C

Question

I am trying to create an array of strings in C   If I use this code   char   a 2   14   a 0   blah   a 1   hmm     gcc gives me  warning  assignment from incompatible pointer type    What is the correct way to do this   edit  I am curious why this should give a compiler warning since if I do printf a 1     it correctly prints  hmm

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char name 10  10  int i j n   here  n  is number of enteries printf   nEnter size of array       scanf   d   amp n   for i 0 i lt n i          for j 0 j lt 1 j                  printf   nEnter name               scanf   s   amp name i              printing the data for i 0 i lt n i          for j 0 j lt 1 j                  printf   d t  t s t  t s  rollno i  j  name i  sex i              printf   n        Here try this

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Your code is creating an array of function pointers  Try  char  a size     or  char a size1  size2     instead   See wikibooks to arrays and pointers

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A good way is to define a string your self    include  lt stdio h gt  typedef char string   int main         string test    string       return 0      It s really that simple

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If you don t want to change the strings  then you could simply do  const char  a 2   a 0     blah   a 1     hmm     When you do it like this you will allocate an array of two pointers to const char  These pointers will then be set to the addresses of the static strings  blah  and  hmm    If you do want to be able to change the actual string content  the you have to do something like  char a 2  14   strcpy a 0    blah    strcpy a 1    hmm      This will allocate two consecutive arrays of 14 chars each  after which the content of the static strings will be copied into them

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If you don t want to keep track of number of strings in array and want to iterate over them  just add NULL string in the end   char  strings      one    two    three   NULL     int i 0  while strings i       printf   s n   strings i        do something   i

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There are several ways to create an array of strings in C   If all the strings are going to be the same length  or at least have the same maximum length   you simply declare a 2-d array of char and assign as necessary   char strs NUMBER OF STRINGS  STRING LENGTH 1       strcpy strs 0   aString      where aString is either an array or pointer to char strcpy strs 1    foo      You can add a list of initializers as well   char strs NUMBER OF STRINGS  STRING LENGTH 1      foo    bar    bletch           This assumes the size and number of strings in the initializer match up with your array dimensions   In this case  the contents of each string literal  which is itself a zero-terminated array of char  are copied to the memory allocated to strs   The problem with this approach is the possibility of internal fragmentation  if you have 99 strings that are 5 characters or less  but 1 string that s 20 characters long  99 strings are going to have at least 15 unused characters  that s a waste of space   Instead of using a 2-d array of char  you can store a 1-d array of pointers to char   char  strs NUMBER OF STRINGS     Note that in this case  you ve only allocated memory to hold the pointers to the strings  the memory for the strings themselves must be allocated elsewhere  either as static arrays or by using malloc   or calloc      You can use the initializer list like the earlier example   char  strs NUMBER OF STRINGS      foo    bar    bletch           Instead of copying the contents of the string constants  you re simply storing the pointers to them   Note that string constants may not be writable  you can reassign the pointer  like so   strs i     bar   strs i     foo      But you may not be able to change the string s contents  i e    strs i     bar   strcpy strs i    foo      may not be allowed     You can use malloc   to dynamically allocate the buffer for each string and copy to that buffer   strs i    malloc strlen  foo     1   strcpy strs i    foo      BTW    char   a 2   14     Declares a as a 2-element array of pointers to 14-element arrays of char

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If the strings are static  you re best off with   const char  my array       eenie   meenie   miney      While not part of basic ANSI C  chances are your environment supports the syntax   These strings are immutable  read-only   and thus in many environments use less overhead than dynamically building a string array     For example in small micro-controller projects  this syntax uses program memory rather than  usually  more precious ram memory  AVR-C is an example environment supporting this syntax  but so do most of the other ones

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Ack  Constant strings   const char  strings       one   two   three      If I remember correctly   Oh  and you want to use strcpy for assignment  not the   operator  strcpy s is safer  but it s neither in C89 nor in C99 standards   char arr MAX NUMBER STRINGS  MAX STRING SIZE    strcpy arr 0    blah      Update  Thomas says strlcpy is the way to go

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The string literals are const char  s   And your use of parenthesis is odd  You probably mean  const char  a 2      blah    hmm      which declares an array of two pointers to constant characters  and initializes them to point at two hardcoded string constants

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I was missing somehow more dynamic array of strings  where amount of strings could be varied depending on run-time selection  but otherwise strings should be fixed   I ve ended up of coding code snippet like this    define INIT STRING ARRAY                                                                   char  args       VA ARGS                  ev   args                                 count    countof args                    void InitEnumIfAny String amp  key  CMFCPropertyGridProperty  item        USES CONVERSION      char   ev   nullptr      int count   0       if  key Compare  horizontal alignment             INIT STRING ARRAY     top    bottom           if  key Compare  boolean            INIT STRING ARRAY     yes    no           if  ev    nullptr           return       for  int i   0  i  lt  count  i            item- gt AddOption A2T ev i          item- gt AllowEdit FALSE       char   ev picks up pointer to array strings  and count picks up amount of strings using  countof function   Similar to sizeof arr    sizeof arr 0      And there is extra Ansi to unicode conversion using A2T macro  but that might be optional for your case

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Here are some of your options   char a1   14       blah    hmm     char  a2        blah    hmm     char   a3           amp  blah    amp  hmm         only since you brought up the syntax -  printf a1 0       prints blah printf a2 0       prints blah printf  a3 0       prints blah   The advantage of a2 is that you can then do the following with string literals  a2 0     hmm   a2 1     blah     And for a3 you may do the following   a3 0     amp  hmm   a3 1     amp  blah     For a1 you will have to use strcpy    better yet strncpy    even when assigning string literals   The reason is that a2  and a3 are arrays of pointers and you can make their elements  i e  pointers  point to any storage  whereas a1 is an array of  array of chars  and so each element is an array that  owns  its own storage  which means it gets destroyed when it goes out of scope  - you can only copy stuff into its storage   This also brings us to the disadvantage of using a2 and a3 - since they point to static storage  where string literals are stored  the contents of which cannot be reliably changed  viz  undefined behavior   if you want to assign non-string literals to the elements of a2 or a3 - you will first have to dynamically allocate enough memory and then have their elements point to this memory  and then copy the characters into it - and then you have to be sure to deallocate the memory when done   Bah - I miss C   already     p s  Let me know if you need examples

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hello you can try this bellow         char arr nb of string  max string length     strcpy arr 0    word      a nice example of using  array of strings in c if you want it   include  lt stdio h gt   include  lt string h gt    int main int argc  char  argv      int i  j  k      to set you array   const arr nb of string  max string length  char array 3  100    char temp 100   char word 100    for  i   0  i  lt  3  i         printf  type word  d     i 1       scanf   s   word       strcpy array i   word      for  k 0  k lt 3-1  k         for  i 0  i lt 3-1  i                  for  j 0  j lt strlen array i    j                             if a letter ascii code is bigger we swap values             if  array i  j   gt  array i 1  j                                 strcpy temp  array i 1                    strcpy array i 1   array i                    strcpy array i   temp                    j   999                                if a letter ascii code is smaller we stop             if  array i  j   lt  array i 1  j                                     j   999                                    for  i 0  i lt 3  i          printf   s n  array i       return 0

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In ANSI C   char  strings 3   strings 0     foo   strings 1     bar   strings 2     baz

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Or you can declare a struct type  that contains a character arry 1 string   them create an array of the structs and thus a multi-element array  typedef struct name      char name 100      100 character array  name   main        name yourString 10      10 strings    printf  Enter something n       scanf   s  yourString 0  name      scanf   s  yourString 1  name         maybe put a for loop and a few print ststements to simplify code       this is just for example       One of the advantages of this over any other method is that this allows you to scan directly into the string without having to use strcpy

[c] How do I create an array of strings in C?

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