Question

I was wanting to create a 2 dimensional string array that had dimensions “string[5][*]” but was having some trouble. I would like to do something like this:

...
for(i = 0;i < 5;i++){
    char* word = ...;
    if(strcmp(word,...)){
        string[i][j] = (char *) malloc(/*size of word*/);
        string[i][j] = word;
        j++;
    }
}

The “string” variable should be of length 5 in the ith direction and should be allowed to grow as much as I need in the jth direction.

I tried doing:

char* string[5];

but that does not seem to work. Please note the above for loop has been simplified and parts might not seem logical.

EDIT:
I am trying to sort a list of strings into 5 categories. So the n-dimentional array should in a sense hold 5 arrays containing an unspecified number of strings (not chars). This I assume is a 3-dimentional char array but was having trouble thinking of how to write it. I want every string[i][j] term to hold a char array. So string[0][0] could equal “cat” or something.

Answer 1

Try this.

char **string;
string = (char **)(malloc(sizeof(char *) * 5));
//malloc the string[i] whenever you need to at what ever size is necessary.

Also in your code at the top the problem is each string[i][j] is a char and you can’t malloc for a non pointer. Every string[i] is a char * you have to malloc for that.