multidimentional array of strings ???

hello. can anyone help in declaring and allocating mem for a dynamic 2-dimensional array of strings?

what i try to do is the following: i'm reading a file that comntains records etc and want to make an array such as:

_____________________________
product code |produc name |
__(char *)______|___(char *)_____|
______________|______________|
______________|______________|
______________|______________|

the first column must contain the product code and the second must have the corresponding product name.

both product codes and product names are strings (char *) and should be allocated dynamically. so it must do the whole array.

i got a bit of a problem visualising arrays that got more than 3 dimensions (like in this case). with three dimensions i think of it as axes x,y,z. but with more i cant see how it works.

any ideas?

thanx a lot

null
any ideas?

Well the way to keep those two things associated is to use a structure, not a 2D array where the minor dimension is a small constant (ie 2).

As well as being more readable, its also far more extendable.

Here's the general idea of the bits you need - if you've got the file reading bit all figured out, shouldn't be too difficult.

Code:

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

typedef struct {
    char *code;
    char *name;
} product_st;

// you may have strdup in your library
char *string_dup ( char *name ) {
    char *res = malloc( strlen(name) + 1 );
    strcpy( res, name );
    return res;
}

int main ( ) {
    char in_code[100], in_name[100];    // input strings
    int num_products = 0;               // number so far

    int max_products = 100;             // initial guess
    product_st *products = malloc( max_products * sizeof(product_st) );

    // read the file to get string
    // this goes inside your loop.
        products[num_products].code = string_dup( in_code );
        products[num_products].name = string_dup( in_name );
        num_products++;

        if ( num_products == max_products ) {
            // read about realloc
        }
    // end loop

    return 0;
}

Hi Salem. You'r right, that seems a much better way to do it...so i did it your way.

Thanx for the help...