help with passing a pointer to a function to another function

how is the pointer to a particular function passed in the following code

Code:

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qsort((void **)lineptr,0,nlines-1,(int(*)(void*,void*))(numeric?numcmp:strcmp));

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is it the normal way to pass a pointer to a function to another function i.e. by writing the name of the function after what seems to be the declaration of the function?

The (int(*)(void*,void*)) looks like a cast that is being provided to shut up the compiler. Numeric probably tests wether the argument is number or not, if it is, the pointer to numcmp is provided, else strcmp.

By right, you should have

Code:

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int str_compare(const void *a,const void *b)
{
  return strcmp(a,b);
}

int int_compare(const void *a,const void *b)
{
  int p = *(const int*)a;
  int q = *(const int*)b;
  if( p > q) {
    return 1;
  } else if( p < q) {
    return -1;
 } else {
  return 0;
}

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The cast is necessary to shut off compiler warning. since strcmp is int (*)(const char*,const char*) , and qsort() wants int (*)(const void*,const void*)

ok. earlier i did not that int(*)(void *,void*) was actually being used for a cast. thankyou.

Note that normally you don't need to do this with with qsort(). In this case what is provided as an argument is not simply a function pointer but a complete conditional expression. The cast is simply telling the compiler to don't mind this and just trust that you know what you are doing. Without all this you should be able to call qsort() like this, (for an array of ints, length 10).

Code:

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int comp(const void* a, const void *b) {
    return *((int*)a) - *((int*)b);
}

int main()
{
    int vect[10] = {4,2,3,7,1,3,5,2,8,1};

    qsort(vect, 10, sizeof(int), comp);

    return 0;
}

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Just note that Bayint's compare function is a lot better than Subsonics'

The latter is susceptible to numeric underflow, which would likely lead to problems.