Thread: Trying to understand Arrays

I am having a hard time grasping the concept of Arrays... I have read about 100 different resources on arrays (Generic at this point) and cannot seem to figure it out.

Here is my attempt at what I think is a simple array.

Code:

#include <stdio.h>

int main()
{
    float a[13]; // Days of Christmas items
    a[0] = Nothing;
    a[1] = A Partridge in a Pear Tree;
    a[2] = Two Turtle Doves;
    a[3] = Three French Hens;
    a[4] = Four Calling Birds;
    a[5] = Five Gold Rings;
    a[6] = Six Geese A-laying;
    a[7] = Seven Swans A-swimming;
    a[8] = Eight Maids A-milking;
    a[9] = Nine Ladies Dancing;
    a[10] = Ten Lords A-leaping;
    a[11] = Eleven Pipers Piping;
    a[12] = Twelve Drummers Drumming;
    
    printf("On the ____ day of Christmas your true love gave to you\n");
    printf("Enter the day of Christmas\n");
    scanf("%f", &a);
    
 
 getchar(); 

}

However when I compile this I get a return error of my floats being undeclared. Am I even on the right track, is this even an array?

Thank You in advance.

First of all, you need quotes aroung any string, so

Code:

A Partridge in a Pear Tree

is treated by the compiler as a list of (undefined) variables, and you'll probably also get some other errors because it's not "correct C". Make it

Code:

"A Partridge in a Pear Tree"

instead.

Now, unfortunately, that's not the only problem. Your type for the array is "float", and you can't store strings in a float - it's meant to store floating point numbers, e.g. 3.14159, 0.0001, 1000101002321.0976275, etc.

A char-pointer would be a better choice ("chat *").

--
Mats

ok you have an array of floats called 'a' and it has storage for 13 floats, indices 0-12. each one stores one float.

when you assign any element of the array you have to give it a value whos data type is float, which is a real number, ie 0, 1, -1, 3.14, 333333, etc.

your (kind of) assigning strings to it, which cant be done.

Thank you for the information all... back to the board.