Thread: Trouble passing string arrays through functions..

Hi everyone,

I'm very new to C. I've dabbled in some Java, C#, etc...

I'm simply trying to create random sentences using strings. For instance...:

Code:

char getNoun() {	
	int randNum = (rand() % 5);


	char nounOne[] = "boy";
	char nounTwo[] = "girl";
	char nounThree[] = "dog";
	char nounFour[] = "town";
	char nounFive[] = "car";
	//printf("%d", randNum); for debugging
	switch(randNum) {
		case 0: //printf("%s", nounOne);
			return nounOne[0];
			break;
		case 1: //printf("%s", nounTwo);
			return nounTwo[0];
			break;
		case 2: //printf("%s", nounThree);
			return nounThree[0];
			break;
		case 3: //printf("%s", nounFour);
			return nounFour[0];
			break;
		case 4: //printf("%s", nounFive);
			return nounFive[0];
			break;
		default: return 'p';  break;
	
	}


}


int main()
{
	srand((unsigned)time(NULL));


	printf("%s %s\n", getNoun(), getNoun());


	system("pause");


    return 0;
}

It works when I printf as "%s" in the getNoun function...but when I call the getNoun() function and try to print it as a "%s" my program crashes. If I printf it as "%c" it will print the first character....

So... I'm very new to pointers and references.... Am I anywhere close to where I need to be? Do I need to iterate through the characters in the string array somehow using pointers?