c program to swap values printing wrong result [closed] - c

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Closed 9 years ago.
Hi I have written a c program that reads in 2 values then swaps them and prints the new values except the second value keeps showing 0. For example it you enter 10 for 'a' and 8 tor 'b', then a will be 8 but b will be 0. Does anyone know the solution to fix this? Here is the code:
#include <stdio.h>
int getData()
{
int a, b;
printf("Enter first number: ");
scanf("%d", &a);
printf("Enter second number: ");
scanf("%d", &b);
return(a, b);
}
void swapValues(int a, int b)
{
printf("The value of a is: %d", b);
printf("\nThe value of b is: %d", a);
return;
}
int main()
{
int a, b = getData();
swapValues(a, b);
return(0);
}

Answer 1

return (a, b);
doesn't do what you think it does, it's a misapplication of the comma operator.
The expression op1, op2 evaluates both op1 and op2 but gives you the value of op2. So it's not passing back a couple of values (although some languages like Python can do this sort of thing).
Similarly,
int a, b = getData();
won't grab the mythical two values returned from getData(). Rather it will set a to an indeterminate value and set b based on the single value returned from the function.
I would be looking at something like this:
#include <stdio.h>
int getData (char *which) {
int val;
printf ("Enter value for %s: ", which);
scanf("%d", &val);
return val;
}
void swapValues (int a, int b) {
printf("The swapped value of a is: %d\n", b);
printf("The swapped value of b is: %d\n", a);
}
int main (void) {
int a = getData ("a");
int b = getData ("b");
swapValues(a, b);
return 0;
}
You should also keep in mind that, if you actually want to swap the variables a and b and have that reflected back to main(rather than just print them as if they've been swapped), you'll need to pass pointers to them and manipulate them via the pointers.
C is a pass-by-value language meaning that changes to function parameters aren't normally reflected back to the caller. That would go something like this:
void swapValues (int *pa, int *pb) {
int tmp = *pa;
*pa = *pb;
*pb = tmp;
}
:
swapValues (&a, &b);
// a and b are now swapped.

Answer 2

You have unnecessarily complicated the whole thing.For one, something like return(a,b) is absurd in C.Further, if you intend to swap, why are you passing b as argument for the printf() meant to print 'a' and passing a to the printf() of 'b'?Anyways,here's a modified code that keeps it simple and gets the job done.
#include <stdio.h>
void swapValues()
{
int a, b,tem;
printf("Enter first number: ");
scanf("%d", &a);
printf("\nEnter second number: ");
scanf("%d", &b);
tem=a;
a=b;
b=tem;
printf("\nThe value of a is: %d", a);
printf("\nThe value of b is: %d", b);
}
int main()
{
swapValues();
return(0);
}

Answer 3

First of all you can't return more than one value in C. The way around that is to return a struct or pass the values address.
void getData(int *a,int* b)
{
//int a, b;
printf("Enter first number: ");
scanf("%d", a); // look here you passed the address of a to scanf
// by doing that scanf can write to a
printf("Enter second number: ");
scanf("%d", b);
//return(a, b);
}
The old main:
int main()
{
int a, b = getData(); // b gets the return value from getData()
// but a is still uninitialized
//to call the new function you have to do the following
int a,b;
getData(&a,&b);
swapValues(a, b);
return(0);
}

Answer 4

You cannot return multiple values from a C function. I'm not even sure why the statement return(a, b) compiles.
If you want to return more than value from a function you should either put them into an array or a structure. I'm going to use a structure to demonstrate one way to do this correctly. There are many ways to do this, but this one modifies you code the least.
struct TwoNums{
int a;
int b;
};
TwoNums getData()
{
/* This creates a new struct of type struct TwoNums */
struct TwoNums nums;
printf("Enter first number: ");
scanf("%d", &(nums.a));
printf("Enter second number: ");
scanf("%d", &(nums.b));
return(a, b);
}
void swapValues(int a, int b)
{
printf("The value of a is: %d", b);
printf("\nThe value of b is: %d", a);
return;
}
int main()
{
/* Get the whole structure in one call */
struct TwoNums nums = getData();
/* Call the swap function using fields of the structure */
swapValues(nums.a, nums.b);
return 0;
}

Answer 5

The first:
getData() function is written incorrectly.
You can not return more than one parameter from the function in C. So you can to separate data reading, or use pointers as below:
void getData(int* a, int* b) {
printf("Enter first number: ");
scanf("%d", a);
printf("Enter second number: ");
scanf("%d", b);
}
In main()
int a, b;
getData(&a, &b);
The second:
swapValues(int a, int b) does not swap the data.
More correct:
void swapValues(int* a, int* b) {
int tmp = *a;
*a = *b;
*b = tmp;
}

Answer 6

without using temporary variable.
So try this code
#include <stdio.h>
int swape()
{
int a,b;
printf("Enter first number: ");
scanf("%d", &a);
printf("Enter second number: ");
scanf("%d", &b);
a=a+b;
b=a-b;
a=a-b;
printf("The value of a is: %d", a);
printf("\nThe value of b is: %d", b);
}
int main()
{
swape();
return(0);
}