printf() isn't being executed - c

Question

I wanted to write a program which counts the occurrences of each letter in a string, then prints one of each letter followed by the count for that letter.
For example:
aabbcccd -
Has 2 a, 2 b, 3 c, and 1 d
So I'd like to convert and print this as:
a2b2c3d1
I wrote code (see below) to perform this count/conversion but for some reason I'm not seeing any output.
#include<stdio.h>
main()
{
char array[]="aabbcccd";
char type,*count,*cp=array;
while(cp!='\0'){
type=*cp;
cp++;
count=cp;
int c;
for(c=1;*cp==type;c++,cp++);
*count='0'+c;
}
count++;
*count='\0';
printf("%s",array);
}
Can anyone help me understand why I'm not seeing any output from printf()?

Answer 1

char array[]="aabbcccd";
char type,*count,*cp=array;
while(cp!='\0'){
*cp is a pointer it's pointing to the address of the start of the array, it will never be == to a char '\0' so it can't leave the loop.
You need to deference the pointer to get what it's pointing at:
while(*cp != '\0') {
...
Also, you have a ; after your for loop, skipping the contents of it:
for(c=1;*cp==type;c++,cp++); <-- this ; makes it not execute the code beneath it
After fixing both of those problems the code produces an output:
mike#linux-4puc:~> ./a.out
a1b1c2cd
Not the one you wanted yet, but that fixes your problems with "printf not functional"

Answer 2

Incidentally, this code has a few other major problems:
You try to write past the end of the string if the last character appears once (you write a '1' where the trailing '\0' was, and a '\0' one character beyond that.
Your code doesn't work if a character appears more than 9 times ('0' + 10 is ':').
Your code doesn't work if a character appears more than 2 times ("dddd" doesn't become "d4"; it becomes "d4dd").

Answer 3

Probably line-buffering. Add a \n to your printf() formatting string. Also your code is very scary, what happens if there are more than 9 of the same character in a row?

Answer 4

1) error correction
while(*cp!='\0'){
and not
while(cp!='\0'){
2) advice
do not use array[] to put in your result user another array to put in your rusel it's more proper and eay

Answer 5

I tried to solve your question quickly and this is my code:
#include <stdio.h>
#define SIZE 255
int main()
{
char input[SIZE] = "aabbcccd";/*input string*/
char output[SIZE]={'\0'};/*where output string is stored*/
char seen[SIZE]={'\0'};/*store all chars already counted*/
char *ip = input;/*input pointer=ip*/
char *op = output;/*output pointer = op*/
char *sp = seen;/*seen pointer=sp*/
char c,count;
int i,j,done;
i=0;
while(i<SIZE && input[i]!='\0')
{
c=input[i];
//don't count if already searched:
done=0;
j=0;
while(j<SIZE)
{
if(c==seen[j])
{
done=1;
break;
}
j++;
}
if(done==0)
{//if i never searched char 'c':
*sp=c;
sp++;
*sp='\0';
//count how many "c" there are into input array:
count = '0';
j=0;
while(j<SIZE)
{
if(ip[j]==c)
{
count++;
}
j++;
}
*op=c;
op++;
*op=count;
op++;
}
i++;
}
*op='\0';
printf("input: %s\n",input);
printf("output: %s\n",output);
return 0;
}
It's not a good code for several reasons(I don't check arrays size writing new elements, I could stop searches at first empty item, and so on...) but you could think about it as a "start point" and improve it. You could take a look at standard library to copy substring elements and so on(i.e. strncpy).