How to access individual characters of an array of strings correctly?

Question

I'm new to c, and I don't yet understand well enough array structures. I've been struggling for the past hour with finding a way to get nth character of the kth string within an array, and I still don't get it. I have no idea why it shows me everything beyond the nth character, when I just want it to show that nth char.

I've checked How do I access an individual character from an array of strings in c? , and I still can't get it to work.

char ch[3][10] = {"Str 1", "Str 2", "Str 3"};
char a[10][10];    
for (int i = 0; i < 3; i++)
{
    strcpy(a[i], ch[i]);
    printf("a[%d]: \"%s\"\n", i, &a[i]);
    for (int j = 0; j < 5; j++)
        printf("a[%d][%d]: \"%s\"\n", i, j, &a[i][j]);
    }

What the output is (nth char + everything beyond):

a[0]: "Str 1"
a[0][0]: "Str 1"
a[0][1]: "tr 1"
a[0][2]: "r 1"
a[0][3]: " 1"
a[0][4]: "1"
a[1]: "Str 2"
a[1][0]: "Str 2"
a[1][1]: "tr 2"
a[1][2]: "r 2"
a[1][3]: " 2"
a[1][4]: "2"
a[2]: "Str 3"
a[2][0]: "Str 3"
a[2][1]: "tr 3"
a[2][2]: "r 3"
a[2][3]: " 3"
a[2][4]: "3"

What I want the output to be (the nth char):

a[0][0]: "S"
a[0][1]: "t"
a[0][2]: "r"
a[0][3]: " "
a[0][4]: "1"
...
...

Barmar · Accepted Answer · 2020-04-15 22:37:56Z

1

%s is used for printing strings. An individual character is not a string, it's a char, you print it with %c.

You also don't use & when passing arguments to printf() (unless you're trying to print a pointer to a variable rather than the variable itself).

for (int i = 0; i < 3; i++)
{
    strcpy(a[i], ch[i]);
    printf("a[%d]: \"%s\"\n", i, a[i]);
    for (int j = 0; j < 5; j++)
        printf("a[%d][%d]: \"%c\"\n", i, j, a[i][j]);
    }
}

answered Apr 15, 2020 at 22:37

Barmar

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Panagiotis Iatrou · Accepted Answer · 2020-04-15 22:48:48Z

0

The problem is in the line

strcpy(a[i], ch[i]);

strcpy is used to copy strings (or an array of chars, that's the full name of it) The way you can access each individual character is by saying ch[i]

Full explanation: Every string hides an extra character in the end. That is \0, the "escape sequence character" This is used so that the compiler knows when the string ends in the memory. The way strcpy works is by looping and copying each character in the string, until it reaches the end of the string (when it sees the \0).

edited Apr 15, 2020 at 22:48

answered Apr 15, 2020 at 22:43

Panagiotis Iatrou

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