How to print a string from a string array in C?

Question

I have a string vector(palavras[x][y]), I can read every word that will be an element of the vector, but I cannot print any of these stored words.

printf("%s",palavras[a][b]), doesn’t work.

Here are my attempts:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
char nomes[1][15];
int i;
scanf("%s",&nomes[0][15]);
scanf("%s",&nomes[1][15]);
printf("%s",&nomes[0][15]);
// for(i=0;i<=15;i++){
// printf("%c",nomes[0][i]);
// }
system("PAUSE");    
return 0;
}

The for commented also did not work. How can I proceed?

Answer 1

Problems

Let’s start by analyzing the problems in the code.

• If he was trying to create a vector of 2 strings, as indicated in the comment, so the size did not go right as it was declared as char nomes[1][15]; and so it got size 1 instead of 2.

• Both the scanfs as the printfs are not right. Let’s look at the first scanf:

  scanf("%s", &nomes[0][15]); //leitura incorreta
  

  He’s trying to read a string (%s) but then pass the address of the 16th characteristic of the first string, and that’s why it’s not right.

  Instead I should just do it like this:

  scanf("%s", nomes[0]); //ler um texto para a primeira posição do array de strings
  

• In the for was also trying to print letter by letter but this is much more complicated than printing the string all with %s, just as it would also be necessary to stop if you found the terminator \0.

Solution

Setting the previously mentioned details your code would look like this:

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
    char nomes[2][15]; //agora com tamanho para 2 strings

    scanf("%s", nomes[0]);
    scanf("%s", nomes[1]); 
    printf("%s" ,nomes[0]);

    int i;
    for(i=0; i<2; i++) {
        printf("%s ",nomes[i]); //agora com %s
    }

    return 0;
}

See the example in Ideone