Bubble Sort String Comparison

[Spare_tyre]

Hi All,

I've been working on this bit of code for a week now - I think I'm close to a solution, but for some reason my program keeps crashing - I've checked several forums including this one for solutions, but I guess I'm missing the basics of constant pointers or something.

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>
#define MAX 12

int main(void)
{
    FILE* handle1 ;
    FILE* handle2 ;
    FILE* handle3 ;
    int i, j ;
    const char nameA[ MAX ][ MAX ] ;
    const char temp[ MAX ][ MAX ] ;

    handle1 = fopen ( "boys.txt", "r" ) ;                        // open file for reading
    handle2 = fopen ( "girls.txt", "r" ) ;                      // open file for reading
    while ( !feof( handle1 ) )                                  // read the data from boys.txt (file handle1) into array A
    {
        fscanf( handle1,"%s", &nameA[ i ] ) ;
        printf( "%d %s\n", i, nameA[ i ] ) ;
        i++ ;
    }
    fclose( handle1 ) ;
    while ( !feof( handle2 ) )                                  // read & append the data from girls.txt (file handle2) into array A
    {
        fscanf( handle2,"%s", &nameA[ i ] ) ;
        printf( "%d %s\n", i, nameA[ i ] ) ;
        i++ ;
    }
    fclose( handle2 ) ;
    for ( i = 0; i < MAX-1; i++ )
    {
        for (j = 0; j < MAX-1; j++ )
        {                                                       // if names compared are not the same and next name is greater than nameA
            if ( strcmp( nameA[ j ], nameA[ j+1 ] ) > 0 )
             {
                printf("%d %s compared to %s", i, nameA[j], nameA[j+1] ) ;
                temp = nameA[ j ] ;
                nameA[ j ] = nameA[ j+1 ] ;                     // swap places with the previous string index in array A
                nameA[ j+1 ] = temp ;
            }

        }

I'm kinda new to most of this - so, any comments about bad code are appreciated

I commented out most of the code & was able to get the program to work up until the strcmp bit. To me, the code:

if ( strcmp( nameA[ j ], nameA[ j+1 ] ) > 0 )

makes sense and i've tried using the same with

if ( !strcmp( nameA[ j ], nameA[ j+1 ] ) )

, but I'm not sure if it's something to do with the array not being const or not const. I've tried many different combinations, but to be honest I'm not sure exactly what I'm doing when using const and * pointer together with [] an array.
I do know that:
const = constant
a pointer points to a place in memory = *
and an array [] is also considered a pointer to a place in memory
right?

[laserlight]

Since you intend to modify their elements, these arrays:

const char nameA[ MAX ][ MAX ] ;
const char temp[ MAX ][ MAX ] ;

should have been declared as:

char nameA[MAX][MAX];
char temp[MAX][MAX];

Do not use feof to control a loop like that. Rather, use the return value of fscanf. Furthermore, nameA[i] is an array of char, so you should just use it as an argument to fscanf, not &nameA[i].

[Spare_tyre]

Thank you for the feedback Laserlight (much appreciated! )
- I'll give this a go now!

[Spare_tyre]

I tried this and I'm still having problems. I substituted the while loop like you suggested for something from the book:

while (EOF != fscanf(handle2, "%s",nameA[ i ] ) )           // read the data from boys.txt (file handle1) into array A
    {
        printf( "%d %s\n", i, nameA[ i ] ) ;
        i++ ;
    }
    fclose( handle2 ) ;

however, the main problem still lies in the swapping of strings.
I'm not sure if the temp varaible should be an int or a char, but the error i'm getting keeps saying something along these lines:
" incompatible types when assigning to type 'char[12][12]' from type 'char *' "
" incompatible types when assigning to type 'char[12]' from type 'char *' "
" incompatible types when assigning to type 'char[12]' from type 'char (*) [12]' "