multidimensional array - newbie help

I have an array called person (person[10][4]) and I want to allow users to enter person information. The person array is char. I am confused about the scan part and Im not sure how to put the user input into the array to look like

James Bond 13 Smith 11111111
Bunny 17 disney 22222222

for example james bond would have his name in [1][1] address [1][2] phone num [1][3] in the array.

I have gathered that I have to use a for loop

Code:

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#include<stdio.h>

#define numRows 10 /* number of rows */
#define numCols 4 /* number of columns */

int main (void)
{
        /*declare variables */
        int i, j;
        char employee[numRows][numCols];

        /*Allow a user to enter employee's details*/
        printf("Please enter the employee's firstname, lastname, pay classification (in $) and hours worked.");
                       
        for (i = 0; i < numRows; ++i)
                for (j = 0; i < numCols; ++j)
                        scanf("%s", &employee[i][j]);
        return 0;
}/*end main() function */

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Have I done this right? If not what do I have to do to fix it?

*try using code tags
*don't use #define if you don't have to
*you need to put your code in a main routine
*where is this for loop you speak of
*this is the c++ board, and your code is in C.

I have updated my code with more detail and code tags.
Also I was thinking could I scan each input for example

Code:

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printf("please enter person's name");
scanf("%s", &a);
printf("please enter person's address");
scanf("%s", &b);
employee[i][j] = {&a, &b};

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by trixxma

I have an array called person (person[10][4]) and I want to allow users to enter person information. The person array is char. I am confused about the scan part and Im not sure how to put the user input into the array to look like

James Bond 13 Smith 11111111
Bunny 17 disney 22222222

for example james bond would have his name in [1][1] address [1][2] phone num [1][3] in the array.

I have gathered that I have to use a for loop

Code:

---

#include<stdio.h>

#define numRows 10 /* number of rows */
#define numCols 4 /* number of columns */

int main (void)
{
        /*declare variables */
        int i, j;
        char employee[numRows][numCols];

        /*Allow a user to enter employee's details*/
        printf("Please enter the employee's firstname, lastname, pay classification (in $) and hours worked.");
                       
        for (i = 0; i < numRows; ++i)
                for (j = 0; i < numCols; ++j)
                        scanf("%s", &employee[i][j]);
        return 0;
}/*end main() function */

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Have I done this right? If not what do I have to do to fix it?

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Have you learned structures yet? If not, let me tell you that you can do this far more effeciently with structures. Example:

Code:

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struct Person
{
        int age;
        char firstName[12];
        char lastName[12];
        char address[30];
        char phoneNumber[11];
};

struct Person people[5]; // array: can hold info for up to 10 persons

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But if that's not an option, fine. Your person multidimensional array is capable of holding information on 10 people, *but* each only have 4 bytes of space, so you would need to up the element amount on the second index from 4 to, say, maybe 50:

char person[10][50];

I personally would discourage the use of scanf, since it's really error-prone and tougher to get right. I encourage you to use fgets instead. It's just like gets but this one is *safer*. Anyway, you would fill each dimension of the array like this:

fgets(person[0], MAX_COUNT, stdin);

and you would do the same for person[1] all the way to person[9] - which is 10 persons because array indexing starts at 0, not 1. And of course, *you*, would determine the length for each piece of data (name, address, phone etc..) to assign to each dimension in a way as to not go over your dimensions bounds.

Think of what you are storing like a database. In a database you need a record, some feilds and the size of those fields. :)

Code:

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

int main (void)
{
        int index1, index2;
        /* 2 records with 2 fields of size 40 */
        char employee[2][2][40];
        char temp[40];

        printf("Please Enter first and last name\n");
       
        for(index1 = 0; index1 < 2; index1++)
                for(index2 = 0; index2 < 2; index2++)
                {
                        scanf("%s", &temp);
                        strcpy(employee[index1][index2], temp);
                }
        printf("\n\n Hello Mr %s, %s\n", employee[0][1], employee[0][0]);
        printf("And hello to you Mr %s, %s\n", employee[1][1], employee[1][0]);

        return 0;
}

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now iv simplified things a bit, and made the output so you can see what you have enterd..
This is for two records with 2 fields of size 40

remeber the size;)

Code:

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scanf("%s", &temp);

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Why not use gets()? :rolleyes:

Read the FAQ (search for "fgets").

Code:

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scanf("%s", &temp);
strcpy(employee[index1][index2], temp);

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Why not just read the data into employee[][] to begin with?

tama00 - the problem with your code it has a warning (warning: format '%s' expects type 'char *', but argument 2 has type 'char (*) [39u]' and my program can not have any warnings.

dwks - how would you suggest that I read the data straight into the array? like below?

Code:

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scanf("%s", employee[index1][index2]);

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