some help plz with finding long/shortest words

Hi to all, I've been trying to write one small program, and I got stuck. I mean, it is finished, it compiles, but does not work as it is supposed to. The task is to keep accepting input from user (words, one by one) until the program spots a four-letter word. That's when it stops and displays the smallest and longest word entered so far.
What is wrong? Well, the "count" variable does not record the new value when entering the while loop again at all. It keeps being incremented by next entered word... What's more, the length of smallest/largest word is not counted at all.

Code:

---

#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
 
#define LEN 20
 
int main()
{
 
    int count;
    int i = 0;
    int count_smallest;
    int count_largest;
    char word[LEN];
    char smallest_word[LEN];
    char largest_word[LEN];
    char ch;
 
 
  do {
      printf("Enter a word: ");
 
      while( (ch = getchar()) != '\n')
            if(i < LEN)
              word[i++] = ch;
 
      word[i]  = '\0';
 
      count = strlen(word);
     
      count_smallest = strlen(smallest_word);
      count_largest = strlen(largest_word);
 
      if(count <= count_smallest)
        strcpy(smallest_word, word);
      else 
        strcpy(largest_word, word);
      }
    while(count != 4);
 
 
    printf("Smallest word is %d letters long and it is: ", 
            count_smallest);
    puts(smallest_word);
    printf("\n");
    printf("Largest word is %d letters long and it is: ",
            count_largest);
    puts(largest_word);
    printf("\n");
 
return 0;
}

---

I will appreciate your fresh look at my code...

The reason your count variable does not record the new value of the word length is that it keeps being initialized to how long "word" is. If you keep assigning more and more letters to "word" it will just keep getting longer and longer so it will never quit the loop. You'll see what I mean if you enter a four letter word on the first try. Just use some printf statements to see what your variables are doing in the loop. That's the easiest way to see it.

That's exactly what I did in my file on my pc, I put extra printf's, and I noticed that none of the counter which are supposed to find the length of words eith do not record it at all (count_smallest, count_largest), or the count for the main input array just gets bigger...
I already tried to set count of word array to zero every time it starts the while loop but it does not get help,. unfortunately.

Basically, the code agian, only with the minor change of count being set to zero when entering the loop...

the output is:

Quote:

---

Enter a word: hget
Smallest word is 0 letters long and it is:

Largest word is 0 letters long and it is: hget

% !!
a.out
Enter a word: hgtaf
Enter a word: hytesk
Enter a word: a
Enter a word: aaaa
Enter a word: ^C

---

Code:

---

#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <ctype.h>
 
#define LEN 20
 
int main()
{
 
    int count;
    int i = 0;
    int count_smallest;
    int count_largest;
    char word[LEN];
    char smallest_word[LEN];
    char largest_word[LEN];
    char ch;
 
 
  do {
      count = 0;
      printf("Enter a word: ");
 
      while( (ch = getchar()) != '\n')
            if(i < LEN)
              word[i++] = ch;
 
      word[i]  = '\0';
 
      count = strlen(word);
     
      count_smallest = strlen(smallest_word);
      count_largest = strlen(largest_word);
 
      if(count <= count_smallest)
        strcpy(smallest_word, word);
      else 
        strcpy(largest_word, word);
      }
    while(count != 4);
 
 
    printf("Smallest word is %d letters long and it is: ", count_smallest);
    puts(smallest_word);
    printf("\n");
    printf("Largest word is %d letters long and it is: ", count_largest);
    puts(largest_word);
    printf("\n");
 
return 0;
}

---

Code:

---

      while( (ch = getchar()) != '\n')
            if(i < LEN)
              word[i++] = ch;

---

What are you trying to do here, because I don't think it is doing what you want it to.

Code:

---

      count_smallest = strlen(smallest_word);
      count_largest = strlen(largest_word);

---

What is the string length on the first iteration of the loop?

Thanks, but I rewrote the whole thing again, from scratch, used a different compiler, and now it works perfect. The problem must been in the order of statements, because I basically wrote the same thing, but in slightly different order, as I noticed. It helped.