[esmile]

Hey everyone! For this HW I need to compare permutations to a dictionary file with binary search. I got the permutations down and I stored all the different permutations in an array. Now for binary search I need to know the size of text document, the text document that is given has the 1st line as the number of words so example:

10
cool
hi
test
sweet
coolio
cat
dog
town
car
ear

My only question is how do I get the loop to store the # as the size of the array of dictionary words? Right now I just have it reading in like this:

for(i=0; i<filelength; i++)
{
fscanf(ifp, "%s", words[i]);
i++;
}

It goes till the file ends, for this HW it specifically states we must scan the int in as the array size.

[Salem_c]

Something like

fscanf(ifp, "%d", &numWords);
for ( i = 0 ; i < numWords ; i++ ) {
    fscanf(ifp, "%s", words[i]);
}

[jimblumberg]

After you retrieve the int then you should use malloc/free combination to create the array to hold the data.

Jim

[esmile]

jimblumberg, on 09 October 2012 - 11:39 PM, said:

After you retrieve the int then you should use malloc/free combination to create the array to hold the data.

Jim

Haha that's actually exactly what she wanted to do. I need to read up on malloc more. She said we need to allocate space for the dictionary array. This was weird because every other assignment I just used the simple for loop to scan in all the words. Could you give me any references that would better explain how to use malloc in this situation?

[jimblumberg]

Try: Malloc.

Jim

[esmile]

jimblumberg, on 09 October 2012 - 11:48 PM, said:

Try: Malloc.

Jim

Hey Jim! thanks for all the help. I actually attempted to use Malloc like this:

char *words = malloc(numWords*sizeof(char));

but it crashed my program lol

[jimblumberg]

Show your code.

Also since this is a character you don't need the multiplication:

char *words = malloc(numWords);

And don't forget to include <stdlib.h>


Jim

[Salem_c]

> char *words = malloc(numWords*sizeof(char));
But this is only sufficient for a single word up to however many characters numWords is.

If you really want an array of words, you need something like

char (*words)[100] = malloc( numWords * sizeof(*words) );

Which is the malloc'ed equivalent of saying
char words[numWords][100];

[esmile]

Salem_c, on 10 October 2012 - 12:58 AM, said:

> char *words = malloc(numWords*sizeof(char));
But this is only sufficient for a single word up to however many characters numWords is.

If you really want an array of words, you need something like

char (*words)[100] = malloc( numWords * sizeof(*words) );

Which is the malloc'ed equivalent of saying
char words[numWords][100];

This helped me so much,so the pointer in (*words) pointed to the (*words). You where right I was just allocating memory for the one word the size of the int. thats what was causing the error. I would post my whole code here but sadly that is not aloud and I would get an F for this assignment.