Please Help me with this ! [ Sorting Arrays] - arrays

Question

Hello Everyone I created an address book by using arrays !... Here I got a problem with sorting arrays of type String .... When I want to Sort a contacts It will just Sort the first names Without moving Second name and phone numb..... etc .. I have no clear Idea about Moving whole line to sort in the address book ! ... I mean moving [first name, surname, phone number, Email] at the same time to the next line !... here is my Code!
void sortRecords() {
ofstream Cfile;
Cfile.open("addressbook.txt", ios::in);
string temp;
for (int i=0; i<line()-1; ++i)
{
for (int j=0; j<line()-1-i; j++)
{
while (first_name[j]>first_name[j+1])
{
temp= first_name[j+1];
first_name[j+1]=first_name[j];
first_name[j]=temp;
}
}
}
for (int p=0; p<line();p++)
{
Cfile<<first_name[p]<<setw(10)<<sur_name[p]<<setw(10)<<phone_number[p]<<setw(10)<<email[p]<<endl;
}
Cfile.close();
}

Answer 1

The efficient way to do this is with a second (numerical) array of "indirection pointers" - which say "the item originally at i is now at j". Then you only have to swap these indices around; but when you're done, you can generate the sorted array by running down this index array just once and making a copy of the elements. This is usually a good way to do it when you are sorting "bunches of stuff".
Alternatively, you just move all the items to their new location; you will want to write a "swap" function to keep your code legible...
It is usually a good idea, when you want to keep a bunch of related items together in an array, to declare a structure. In your case, this structure might look like this:
typedef struct {
char first_name[32];
char last_name[32];
char phone_number[16];
} entry;
Then you can declare your phone book as
entry phoneBook[100];
which would create enough space for 100 phonebook entries.
Finally, when you go through the list of entries, you might modify your bubble sort like this (assuming that n = number of entries):
for ( int i=0; i < n - 1; i++ )
{
for ( int j = i; j < n; j++ )
{
if (strcmpi(entries[j].first_name, entries[j+1].first_name) > 0)
{
swap(entries, j, j+1);
}
}
}
And finally you would have a swap function like this:
void swap(entry* e, int i, int j) {
// swap all elements of e[i] and e[j]
entry temp;
strcpy(temp.first_name, e[i].first_name);
strcpy(temp.last_name, e[i].last_name);
strcpy(temp.phone_number, e[i].phone_number;
strcpy(e[i].first_name, e[j].first_name);
strcpy(e[i].last_name, e[j].last_name);
strcpy(e[i].phone_number, e[j].phone_number;
strcpy(e[j].first_name, temp.first_name);
strcpy(e[j].last_name, temp.last_name);
strcpy(e[j].phone_number, temp.phone_number;
}