Spliting the value of a % between multiple characters - c

Question

I've been given an assignment question, and I've managed to figure it all out so far, with the exception of splitting a remainder value betwen a few (input determinate) characters.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
For reference, my assignment question is:
"If you look at a newspaper you will see that the writing is justified to fit into the columns. Write a program that reads in the width of the columns in a newspaper and then a line of text. Justify the line of text to fit into a column of that width. When your program is running, the screen should look something like this:
Enter the width of the column: 40
Enter a line of text: Good morning how are you?
12345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890...
Good morning how are you?
The justification is done by counting the number of gaps in the text. In the above example, there are 4 gaps. Then each gap must have spaces added to it. The number of extra spaces must be shared out as evenly as possible. In the above example, the first three gaps have 5 spaces each and the last gap has 4 spaces.
Notes:
If the text is longer than the column then you must report an error – don't try and break it into two lines!
Assume that the text will have more than one word in it.
Note the header line consisting of 123456789012345678.... this is useful to check your result.
You can make this header line as long as you like – 70 spaces would be a useful length.
"
And my code so far is:
int main() {
//input column width
printf("Enter the width of the column: ");
int column;
scanf("%d", &column);
//input text line
printf("Enter a line of text: ");
char string[80];
getchar();
gets(string);
//print 1234567890 column header
int y = 1,x = 0;
while(x < column){
if(y > 9){
y = 0;
}
printf("%d", y);
y++;
x++;
}
printf("\n");
//count spaces
int i = 0;
int space_count = 0;
while(string[i] != '\0'){
if(string[i] == 0x20){
space_count++;
}
//printf("%c", string[i]);
i++;
}
//work out variables
int string_length = i;
int remainder_space = (column - string_length);
int space_power = (remainder_space / space_count);
//int oddremainder = (space_count % remainder_space) ;
//space_power = (space_power + oddremainder);
//if
//remainder %
//insert column width check
if(string_length > column)
{
printf("Text is too long. Shouldn't be more than %dcharacters\n",
column);
return 1;
}
//output
i = 0;
while(string[i] != '\0'){
if(string[i] == 0x20){
for(x = 0; x < space_power; x++){
printf("%c", 0x20);
}
}
printf("%c", string[i]);
i++;
}
I'm sorry if this isn't the appropriate way of asking a question, my brain is fried and I can't get my head around this.
Any pointers or discusion in the right direction would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

Lets see the example. It has 19 spaces to be filled in 4 gaps. If your code runs like that, the value of space_power will be 4 (int(19/4)), and this leaves 3 spaces in the end. You need to keep track of 19 % 4, ie. 3 extra spaces.
So, keep a count, initially equal to 3. Then, while this count is greater than 0, print one extra space along with all space_power number of spaces. Decrease count every time you print a word.
Your code would be like this:
count = remainder_space % space_count;
and output block:
i = 0;
while(string[i] != '\0'){
int k = count > 0 ? 1 : 0;
if(string[i] == 0x20){
for(x = 0; x < space_power + k; x++){
printf("%c", 0x20);
}
count--;
}
printf("%c", string[i]);
i++;
}