Thread: Is the solution to the following exercise correct?

I've been stuck for hours trying to solve the following exercise:

"Write a function called monthName that takes as its argument a value of type enum
month (as defined in this chapter) and returns a pointer to a character string containing
the name of the month. In this way, you can display the value of an enum month variable
with a statement such as:

printf (“%s\n”, monthName (aMonth));"

I think I solved it, but the solution and the code doesn't feel right.

Is there a simpler or better way to solve this exercise?

Also, could you point out the errors in the code, if any.

Code:

#include <stdio.h>

enum month { january = 1, february, march, april, may, june,
	     july, august, september, october, november, december };

int main (void)
{
    enum month aMonth;
    char *monthName (enum month temp);

    printf ("%s\n", monthName (1));
    
    return 0;
}

char *monthName (enum month temp)
{
    switch (temp) {
	case january:
	   return "January";
	case february:
	   return "February";
	case march:
	   return "March";
	case april:
	    return "April";
	case may:
	    return "May";
	case june:
	    return "June";
	case july:
	    return "July";
	case august:
	    return "August";
	case september:
	    return "September";
	case october:
	    return "October";
	case november:
	    return "November";
	case december:
	    return "December";
	default:
	    return "Please choose the correct value.";
    }
}

It's not that bad as a first attempt.

Perhaps this is more what you had in mind.

Code:

static char *monthNames[] = {
    "",
    "January",
    "February",
    // and so on
};
return monthNames[month];