Help using pointers to shift characters

[decxan]

I'm pretty new to c programming and I'm having some trouble with an assignment. I need to shift the characters "a,b,c,d,e" 5 times using pointers and a function, so for example the next time it would display "b,c,d,e,a". I know my code is'nt the best but it seems to display random characters, altough they do seem to be shifting the correct way. Heres the code:

#include <stdio.h>
void shift(char *p1, char *p2, char *p3, char *p4, char *p5);

void main()
{
char a,b,c,d,e;
shift(&a,&b,&c,&d,&e);
printf("%c%c%c%c%c\n", a,b,c,d,e);
shift(&a,&b,&c,&d,&e);
printf("%c%c%c%c%c\n", a,b,c,d,e);
shift(&a,&b,&c,&d,&e);
printf("%c%c%c%c%c\n", a,b,c,d,e);
shift(&a,&b,&c,&d,&e);
printf("%c%c%c%c%c\n", a,b,c,d,e);
shift(&a,&b,&c,&d,&e);
printf("%c%c%c%c%c\n", a,b,c,d,e);
}
void shift(char *p1, char *p2, char *p3, char *p4, char *p5)
{
	char temp;
	temp = *p1;
	*p1 = *p2;
	*p2 = *p3;
	*p3 = *p4;
	*p4 = *p5;
	*p5 = temp;
}

Any help would be really appreciated.

[CommonTater]

The reason it's displaying garbage is that your a,b,c,d,e variables are character variables, not the letters "a", "b", etc. They are uninitialized and thus are very likely to contain garbage values.

To initialize them you need....

char a = 'a';
char b = 'b';
etc.

I don't know if you've covered arrays yet, but this would be a good task for a small array of characters.

[decxan]

That got it working perfectly, thanks a million. I think we're going over arrays next, can't wait Thanks again for the quick response.