Manipulating a large, random string

I can't quite wrap my head around a good approach to to randomly printing a word (as a string of characters) into an already printed box of random letters. I figure this would all be done to a file, but considering I'm an amateur at file manipulation, this is difficult.

I can construct the box of letters:

Code:

void bld(char str[11]){
int i, j, rng;
char alpha[27] = "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz";

FILE *fp;

fp = fopen("foo.txt", "w")

for (i=0; i < VER; i++){
        for (j=0; j < HOR; j++){
            rng = rand() % 26;
            fprintf(fp, "%c", alpha[rng]);
        }
        fprintf(fp, "\n");
    }
 
fclose(fp);

return;
}

From here, I'm at a mental road block.

Does anyone know any good methods for modifying the printed string?

It sounds like what you want to do is to keep the string in memory, manipulate it, and then print it when done.

Originally Posted by laserlight

It sounds like what you want to do is to keep the string in memory, manipulate it, and then print it when done.

Hmm... seems reasonably easier. I wasn't sure if I could get away with that.

It's unclear what you want. It looks like you're creating a 2D array of random characters. Do you want to overwrite some of those with a word, like this? (The x's are random chars.)

Code:

x x x x
x x x x
x H I x
x x x x

If so, do you need to do it in different directions, like diagonally?

Code:

x x x x
x H x x
x x I x
x x x x

That's exactly it.

Try writing (and posting) some code to fill a HOR by VER sized character array with random letters.

How's this?

Code:

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


#define PAUSE   system("PAUSE")
#define CLEAR   system("CLS")
#define HOLD    getchar()
#define MAX     11
#define SET     27
#define HOR     30
#define VER     10


int main(){
    int i, j, rng;
    char grd[HOR][VER] = {'\0'},
    alpha[SET] = "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz";


    for (i = 0; i < VER; i++){
        for (j = 0; j < HOR; j++){
            rng = rand() % VER;
            *grd[j] = alpha[rng];
            printf("%c", *grd[j]);
        }
        printf("\n");
    }




    HOLD;
    CLEAR;
    PAUSE;


    return 0;
}

Almost got it!

Change the inner part to:

Code:

for (i = 0; i < VER; i++) {
    for (j = 0; j < HOR; j++) {
        grd[i][j] = (rand() % ('z' - 'a')) + 'a'; 
        printf("%c", grd[i][j]);
    }
    printf("\n");
}

And lose the HOLD/CLEAR/PAUSE calls, not only is it non-portable, the macros make it confusing.

Huh, this is definitely more efficient.

Thanks for the tip on the macros, they're a force of habit.

That looks pretty good, except that you're only writing to the first "row" of the array. See memcpy's post.

Try separating it out into a function.

And write a separate function to print it out.

Then try making a function to insert the word.

Also, you should have a call to srand early in main:

Code:

srand(time(0))