Proper use of structures and pointers - c

Question

I have to declare a vector with the "struct" type which, for every n students, it creates a value for the group that student belongs to (which is like a counter), their names and their grades.
The program has to output the name of the students with the highest grade found in these groups. I have to allocate the vector on the heap (I only know the theoretical explanation for heap, but I have no idea how to apply it) and I have to go through the vector using pointers.
For example if I give n the value 4, there will be 4 students and the program will output the maximum grade together with their names as shown here.
This will output Ana 10 and Eva 10.
I gave it a try, but I have no idea how to expand it or fix it so I appreciate all the help I can get with explanations if possible on the practical application of heap and pointers in this type of problem.
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
struct students {
int group;
char name[20];
int grade;
};
int main()
{
int v[100], n, i;
scanf("%d", n);
for (i = 0; i < n; i++) {
v[i].group = i;
scanf("%s", v[i].name);
scanf("%d", v[i].grade);
}
for (i = 0; i < n; i++) {
printf("%d", v[i].group);
printf("%s", v[i].name);
printf("%d", v[i].grade);
}
return 0;
}
Here I was just trying to create the vector, nothing works though..

Answer 1

It appears, int v[100]; is not quite what you want. Remove that.
You can follow either of two ways.
Use a VLA. After scanning the value of n from user, define the array like struct students v[n]; and carry on.
Define a fixed size array, like struct students v[100];, and use the size to limit the loop conditions.
That said,
scanf("%d", n); should be scanf("%d", &n);, as %d expects a pointer to integer type argument for scanf(). Same goes for other cases, too.
scanf("%s", v[i].name); should better be scanf("%19s", v[i].name); to avoid the possibility of buffer overflow by overly-long inputs.

Answer 2

Even though you are asking for the number of students (groups) using scanf, you hardcoded the upper bound of this value using v[100]. So, I passed your input variable n (the number of students) to malloc in order to allocate the space you need for creating an array of n students.
Also, I used qsort to sort the input array v where the last element would be the max value. Here qsort accepts an array of structs and deference the pointers passed to the comp function to calculate the difference of the comparison.
Finally, I printed the sorted array of structs in the last loop.
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
struct students {
int group;
char name[20];
int grade;
};
int comp(const void *a, const void *b)
{
return ((((struct students *)a)->grade > ((struct students *)b)->grade) -
(((struct students *)a)->grade < ((struct students *)b)->grade));
}
int main()
{
int n;
printf("Enter number of groups: ");
scanf("%d", &n);
printf("\n");
struct students *v = malloc(n * sizeof(struct students));
int i;
for(i = 0; i < n; i++)
{
v[i].group = i;
printf("\nName: ");
scanf("%s", v[i].name);
printf("Grade: ");
scanf("%d", &v[i].grade);
}
qsort(v, n, sizeof(*v), comp);
for(i = 0; i < n; i++)
{
printf("Group %d, Name %s, grade %d\n", v[i].group, v[i].name, v[i].grade);
}
return (0);
}

Answer 3

You need to replace the standalone array v[100], with an array of structs referencing your structure:
struct students v[100];
However, if you want to use malloc to allocate memory on the heap, you will need to do something like this:
struct students *students = malloc(n * sizeof(struct students));
/* Check void* return pointer from malloc(), just to be safe */
if (students == NULL) {
/* Exit program */
}
and free the requested memory from malloc() at the end, like this:
free(students);
students = NULL;
Additionally, adding to #Sourav Ghosh's answer, it is also good to check the return value of scanf(), especially when dealing with integers.
Instead of simply:
scanf("%d", &n);
A more safe way is this:
if (scanf("%d", &n) != 1) {
/* Exit program */
}
With all this said, your program could look something like this:
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#define NAMESTRLEN 20
typedef struct { /* you can use typedef to avoid writing 'struct student' everywhere */
int group;
char name[NAMESTRLEN+1];
int grade;
} student_t;
int
main(void) {
int n, i;
printf("Enter number of students: ");
if (scanf("%d", &n) != 1) {
printf("Invalid input.\n");
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
student_t *students = malloc(n * sizeof(*students));
if (!students) {
printf("Cannot allocate memory for %d structs.\n", n);
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
for (i = 0; i < n; i++) {
students[i].group = i;
printf("Enter student name: ");
scanf("%20s", students[i].name);
printf("Enter students grade: ");
if (scanf("%d", &(students[i].grade)) != 1) {
printf("Invalid grade entered.\n");
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
}
printf("\nStudent Information:\n");
for (i = 0; i < n; i++) {
printf("Group: %d Name: %s Grade: %d\n",
students[i].group,
students[i].name,
students[i].grade);
}
free(students);
students = NULL;
return 0;
}