Sorting 2.. 1-D arrays of different types

Working on a program that reads in a .txt file with a list of stocks and stock data i.e...
Co. LO HI
------------------
AOL 40 48
HP 23 45
CSCO 18 60

I've created 2 separte arrays one the ticker and one for the data.
I need to sort the ticker array while also sorting the corresponding hi and low data. Not sure how being that they are of different type. Thanks for any assistance.

Hi,
I'd suggest a struct

struct stock
{
char name[10] ; //Symbols are shorter than 9 chars
float low;
float high;
};

struct stock Mystocks[100]; // 100 stocks


Use strcmp() to put them in order(ie.)

struct stock TEMP;

if(strcmp(Mystock[x].name, Mystock[x+1].name) > 0)
{
TEMP = Mystock[x];
etc.
}

That way all three struct members are changed at once.

Hope this helps.

Pappy

>I need to sort the ticker array while also sorting the
>corresponding hi and low data
The easiest and most useful way is to simply have different sorting options, one for alphabetical sort, one for high sort, and one for low sort. Another possible solution is to hash all of the values together and use that as the condition for swapping in the sort:

Code:

/* Very crude example */
hash1 = hash ( a[j-1].array ), hash2 = hash ( a[j].array );
if ( a[j-1].low + a[j-1].high + hash1 > a[j].low + a[j].high + hash2 ) {
  temp   = a[j-1];
  a[j-1] = a[j];
  a[j]   = temp;
}

The problem with this is that it may not sort it quite as you want, which is a reason to sort for each field instead of combining all of the fields. The output of this sort test with your given data is:

Code:

HP   23 45 
AOL  40 48 
CSCO 18 60

-Prelude

the quickest and most efficient way if your NOT using dynamic memory is to read in the entire file first then sort it (guessing you already knew this but just incase), otherwise if you sort on each insertion you will be doing a hell of a lot of sorting when it can be quickly done at the end.