how can i do this in c ?

[dune911]

hi!

my program should read "words" out of a main-database and then print between 1 and 10 "words" out of the main-db with a randomizer function on the screen.

my ways:

a) an external file, which my program can read. but in this way the main-db can be "harmed" by other people. that is not what i want it to be...

b) is there a way to include the whole main-db somewhere in my main-code? maybe direct in the main-code.c oder in an additional.c file? maybe a .h file?

if you can help me, please use plain c code without c++ extensions.

the main-program is already done. there is a main-menu from where you can start two functions and also end the program. function 1 should read a number between 1 and 10 and then print between 1 and 10 "words" out of the main-db on the screen.

thanks alot for any help!

[Salem]

> b) is there a way to include the whole main-db somewhere in my main-code?
If your file looks like this, then yes

"word1",
"word2",
"word3", "word4",
/* etc */

If your word file is not in this form, then you need to implement some mechanism to do this.

On linux say, I would think about using either sed or awk to do this formatting for me.

[dune911]

hi salem!

my list would be something like this:

Word001
Word002
Word003
Word004
Word005
...

the words are "names". i want to program a name-generator for rpg-names. the data-type must be case sensitive (but i think it is).

can you tell me more about store that kind of information in my code, so nobody can change it?

[Engineer]

if you have constant word that never change, you can hard code them in your code:

char db[10][4] = { "aaa", "bbb", "ccc", ... "kkk" };

and then use the character array db as your database.

[Salem]

> Word001
> Word002
So long as you've got the double quotes and commas in place, then you can do this

char *db[] = {
#include "word-list.h"
};

Where word-list.h contains (you guessed it ) a word list, formatted as described.

[dune911]

there is not always the same word...

for an example my wordlist could be:

{
Salem;
dune911;
Engineer;
}

and by pressing [1] in the main menu the code should output one of this three names random on the screen.

i want to know, how to include the worldlist in my program and how to read the entries of my worldlist random by a function...

man, this sounds really hard to me *sigh*

[dune911]

hi salem,

i haven't worked with pointers, yet...
do you think i should better read my books first before asking "wide above"-stuff on this board?

if you don't think so, can you post a sample code of a function which gets a random name out of my list.h and print it on the screen? *damn* and, how exactly does my list.h have to look like?

(how can sourcecode can be displayed in my posts??)

> Word1;
> Word2;

?

[dune911]

salem,

i forgot a little something:

please don't think i want you to make my homework... i can not imagine how many time you may need to write a sample code for me and also i don't want you to take so much time for it.

but i will be happy if you can help me a little bit...
it's better to RTFM first, huh?

[quzah]

The answer is fairly simple: Given an array of Z size, you can grab a random item from the array by simply doing:

srand( time( 0 ) ); //only called once per program
item = array[rand()%size];


Quzah.

[dune911]

sorry...
i think i should really better read something about pointers and things like this in my books before asking on a professional message board like this one...
actually i cannot "understand" anything you're posting here. damn, i'm a newbie! *sigh*

thank you for your help! i will print this thread, maybe i find something that helps me with your examples in my books...