Another question from the land of the newbies.

[Abactor]

Hello, guys! Last time you've been of immense help to me (pointing out a most stupid mistake indeed), so this time I hope you will also be kind enough to explain something to a newbie.
Here's is the deal. I've actually reached the "sorting chapter" of my textbook and, predictably enough, tripped over the "Bubble array". Anyhow, this book (Absolute beginner's guide to C) provides the following code for sorting the array of random numbers (previously generated):

for(outer = 0; outer < 9; outer ++)
    {
        did_swap = 0;
        for(inner = outer; inner < 10; inner ++)
        {
            if(nums[inner] < nums[outer])
            {
                temp = nums[inner];
                nums[inner] = nums [outer];
                nums[outer] = temp;
                did_swap = 1;
            }
        }
        if(did_swap == 0)
        {
            break;
        }
    }

What I can't wrap my head around is the following: we set the OUTER counter to 0 (so, if my array has nine numbers (5, 1, 4, 8, 7, 2, 3, 9, 10, 14), the number I'm dealing with is 5).
Then we state that INNER = OUTER, which effectively makes it equal to 0 (so, again, in my array the number we'll be dealing with will be 5).
How can we compare nums[inner] with nums[outer], if both of them are 0, which makes them essentially one and the same number???? I could understand this code if we had inner = outer + 1...But I have no idea what to make of inner = outer...
The code works, though, which does not contribute to my self-esteem at all!
Thank you in advance for your help and patience!

[algorism]

Get ready for a self-esteem boost: I totally agree with you.

[Iiz]

Of course we can compare two similar numbers, you're absolutely correct when nums[inner]=nums[outer]=nums[0], basically it's comparing the same number so the if would return a false in this case. Try to look what happens when the iteration proceeds more and it'll start to clear up.

[ordak]

You can take a look at this link that I found. Two versions of Bubble sort C codes are mentioned there. By the way you may need to include <stdbool.h> for the second C code so that you could compile it.

Specially note the bool type and usage of true rather than 1, and false rather than 0. see this link too.