array.length in C problem

manolakis · 01-31-2007, 04:25 PM

Hey there
I am trying to make a fuction in C which converts an array of chars to a list of characters.
This is what i get

Quote:

wordADT.c: In function `buildWord':
wordADT.c:17: error: request for member `length' in something not a structure or union

What i trying to do is to access each element of that array.
My code looks like that.

//my fuction body. It takes as a parameter char str[]
int i;
for (i=0; i<str.length; i++)
{
//do something
}

Any ideas?
Thanks for your time.

matthewg42 · 01-31-2007, 04:31 PM

Please put code in [code] tags to improve readability.

char* values (like str in your example) don't have member functions. You should read up about the basics of data types in C. Also, you're using C++ style comments - do you want to use the C++ string class, or C char pointers?

In C, you'd probably want to be using the strlen function, assuming your char is null-terminated. In C++ you might want to use the string class.

Dan04 · 01-31-2007, 07:47 PM

You're a Java programmer, aren't you?

In C, arrays aren't aware of their length. The workarounds for this are:

1) Use a sentinel value to indicate where the array ends. This is the convention that's used for strings. Iterating through a null-terminated string is done with:

Code:

char* p;

for (p = str; *p != '\0'; ++p) {
   /* do something */
}

2) For each array used as a function parameter, pass the array's length in another parameter. For example,

Code:

int main(int argc, char* argv[])