Question

So I’m making a program which is supposed to print a horizontal histogram of the lengths of words in its input. So I changed the while into if so it now accepts more than 1 input. But what’s wrong with it this time? It won’t print the graph.

/*Write a program to print a histogram of the lengths of words in its input. 
It is easy to draw the histogram with the bars horizontal*/
#include <stdio.h>
#define MAX 30
#define IN 1
#define OUT 0
int main()
{
int a,c,i,k,state,word[MAX];
a=0;
k=0;
state=OUT;
for(i=0;i<MAX;i++)
    word[i]=0;
while((c=getchar())!=EOF)
{
    if(c==' '||c=='\t'||c=='\n')
        state=OUT;
    else
        state=IN;
    if(state==IN)
        a++;

    if(state==OUT)
        {
        word[i]=a;
        i++;
        a=0;
        }



}
/*This part is pissing me off, I don't know how to print X multiple times!*/
for(i=0;i<MAX;i++)
    if(word[i]>0)
        {
            for(k=0;k<=word[i];k++)
            putchar('-');
            putchar('\n');
        }


}

Answer 1

That’s your problem right there

while(state==IN)
    a++;

This is basically an endless loop, it will loop forever incrementing a

Edit: Ok, part two then.

First off what you are doing with a is not what you think you are doing.

I think you think you are using it to count word length but you are not resetting it to 0 after each word so it will in fact keep on counting number of found chars. Your histogram will just show growing numbers.

Second, in your print loop you are using i in both loops leading to a delicious mess of some sort.

Edit: Part three

I just spotted that you are printing the histogram inside the input-loop on the conditional

if((c==getchar())&&c==EOF)

This is probably not going to work, I suggest to move the printing outside the while loop and remove the condition

while ((c=getchar())!=EOF)
{
   ...
}
for(i=0;i<MAX;i++)
{
    for(k=0;k<=word[i];k++)
        putchar('-'); 
    putchar('\n');
}

then it will get executed after you are finished taking input

Edit: Part four

You have reused i as index into the array without setting it to zero, the consequence being that the program assigns word lengths to indexes 30-59 which are all outside the array, that it does not crash is just pure luck. Setting i = 0 before entering the input loop makes the program work.

Now all you have left to think about is why it prints word lengths one too long, I leave that as an exercise to the reader. Hint: It has to do with comparison operators