Question

I am using the selection sort to sort a list of names from a cricket team.

The sort works after first repeating a name 3 times which eliminates two other names from the array I am sorting.

Input from array (in order):

Clarke Watson Beer Copeland Haddin Harris Hughes Hussey Johnson Khawaja Lyon Marsh Pattinson Ponting Siddle Warner

Output after sorting array:

Beer Beer Beer Copeland Haddin Harris Hughes Hussey Johnson Khawaja Lyon Marsh Pattinson Ponting

Code:

void sort_names (Team_t player[]) {
    int pos;
    int min;
    int i, str_check;
    char *temp = NULL;

    for (pos = 0; pos < MAX_PLYR; pos++) {
        min = pos;

        for (i = (pos + 1); i < MAX_PLYR; i++) {
            str_check = strcmp(player[i].pname, player[min].pname);

            if (str_check < 0) {
                min = i;
            }

        }

        if (min != pos) {
            temp = player[pos].pname;
            strcpy(player[pos].pname, player[min].pname);
            strcpy(player[min].pname, temp);
        }
    }    
}

Answer 1

This bit of your code won’t swap entries correctly:

temp = player[pos].pname;
strcpy(player[pos].pname, player[min].pname);
strcpy(player[min].pname, temp);

The first line saves a pointer to the ‘pos’ player’s name to temp – not the name itself. Then the first strcpy overwrites it – it is lost. (The second strcpy merely copies the same string back to where it already was.) That’s why you see the item that would sort first sprouting up more than once.