C - Creating an array of character arrays - c

Question

I am trying to make an array of character Arrays. The program will read in sentences and store the sentences in a character array, and then that character array will be stored in another array. After reading numerous websites and Stack Over Flow pages I think it can be done like this. The program breaks when trying to store my character array into another array, so i'm not sure how to correct my code.
#include <stdio.h>
#include <math.h>
#include <time.h>
int main(int ac, char *av[])
{
int size; //number of sentences
char strings[100];// character array to hold the sentences
char temp;
printf("Number of Strings: ");
scanf_s("%d", &size); // read in the number of sentences to type
char **c = malloc(size); //array of character arrays
int i = 0;
int j = 0;
while (i < size) //loop for number of sentences
{
printf("Enter string %i ",(i+1));
scanf_s("%c", &temp); // temp statement to clear buffer
fgets(strings, 100, stdin);
// **** this next line breaks the program
c[i][j] = strings; // store sentence into array of character arrays
j++;
i++;
}
printf("The first character in element 0 is: %d\n", c[0][0]);
system("PAUSE");
return 0;
}

Answer 1

Al you need to do is allocate the memory for the string just read and copy the string:
c[i][j] = strings; // replace this with:
c[i]= malloc(strlen(strings)+1);
strcpy(c[i],strings);

Answer 2

Sadly char **c is not array of characters arrays. But this will properly allocate a 2d array dynamically if you follow
char (*c)[SIZE];
And then doing this
c = malloc(sizeof(char[LEN][SIZE]));
Then you do what you are trying to do.
for(size_t i = 0; i < LEN; i++){
if(fgets(c[i],SIZE,stdin)){
...
}
}
Or you can do it like this
char **c = malloc(LEN);
..
for(size_t i = 0; i < LEN; i++){
c[i] = malloc(SIZE);
...
}
But again c is nothing but jagged array of characters.
Check the return value of malloc and free the dynamically allocated memory when you are done working with it.

Answer 3

Listen dude,
Do you want to store the words in the character array and then store this in another array.
It is what you want ?
If yes then you can do the following.
Use stdlib by using # include <stdlib.h> .
This lets you use string functions directly.
Now read every word as a string and make array of strings.
So now if you number of strings is n, define an array for that as string my_array[n] and scan each word using scanf("%s",&my_array [i]).
In this way you will get an array of strings.