swapping strings (which are stored in an array)

[nair]

I am new to programming, new to the C language, and new to this forum.

My question deals with manipulating the elements of an array which store strings, (strings being an array of chars). Specifically, I want to know how to swap the contents of one element (which contains a string) with the contents of another element (which contains a string).

Say I define an array as follows:

char stuff[2]={"Hello","World"};

How can I swap the contents "Hello", found at stuff[0], with "World" found at stuff[1]?

I am familiar with swapping elements in an array, doing something like:

temp=array[x];
array[x]=array[y];
array[y]=temp;

but I have only been able to do it successfully with arrays storing integers. When I try to do it with arrays storing strings, I run into problems. I have a shallow understanding of strings in C. I don't know if I am suppose to be using pointers, if I am suppose to be loading certain libraries like <string.h>, or if I should be using some other approach I am not even considering. I've got a shallow understanding of pointers too, and I've never even used the <string.h> library before. The K&R book's appendix explains some of the things I can do with <string.h>, but I haven't been able to apply those things to my problem.

So far, strings have proved very difficult for me to manipulate. Integers seem so much friendlier in C.

[CommonTater]

It's the same basic procedure... copy to a temp, move one to the other, copy the temp back in, but you are doing it with strcpy() or wcscpy() instead of simple equals signs.

Something like this...

char stuff[2]={"Hello","World"};

void Swap(void)
  { char temp[6];
     strcpy(temp,stuff[1]);
     strcpy(stuff[1], stuff[2]);
     strcpy(stuff[2],temp); }

The big reason strings seem "unfriendly" in C is that C does not natively support a "string" type. A C string is an array of characters.

[nonoob]

However, if you had

char *stuff[2]={"Hello","World"};

then you could swap the pointers via:

char *temp;
temp = array[0];
array[0] = array[1];
array[1] = temp;