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C program to sort the words of the string

Here, we are going to learn how to sort the words of the string in C programming language?
Submitted by Nidhi, on July 23, 2021

Problem statement

Read a string from the user, then sort the words of strings using C program.

C program to sort the words of the string

The source code to sort the words of the string is given below. The given program is compiled and executed using GCC compile on UBUNTU 18.04 OS successfully.

// C program to sort the words of the string

#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>

void sortWords(char* str)
{
    int i = 0;
    int j = 0;
    int k = 0;
    int spaces = 0;

    char ptr1[50][100];
    char ptr2[50][100];
    char cmp[50];

    while (str[i]) {
        if ((str[i] == ' ') || (str[i] == ',') || (str[i] == '.'))
            spaces++;
        i++;
    }

    for (i = 0; j < strlen(str); j++) {
        if ((str[j] == ' ') || (str[j] == 44) || (str[j] == 46)) {
            ptr2[i][k] = '\0';
            i++;
            k = 0;
        }
        else
            ptr2[i][k++] = str[j];
    }

    for (i = 0; i < spaces; i++) {
        for (j = i + 1; j <= spaces; j++) {
            if ((strcmp(ptr2[i], ptr2[j]) > 0)) {
                strcpy(cmp, ptr2[i]);
                strcpy(ptr2[i], ptr2[j]);
                strcpy(ptr2[j], cmp);
            }
        }
    }

    printf("String after sorting is:\n");
    for (i = 0; i <= spaces; i++)
        printf("%s ", ptr2[i]);
    printf("\n");
}

int main()
{
    char str[65];

    printf("Enter string: ");
    scanf("%[^\n]s", str);

    sortWords(str);
    return 0;
}

Output

RUN 1:
Enter string: This is my laptop which is the best
String after sorting is:
This best is is laptop my the which

RUN 2:
Enter string: Is Are Am
String after sorting is:
Am Are Is 

RUN 3:
Enter string: banana cat apple
String after sorting is:
apple banana cat

Explanation

In the above program, we created two functions sortWords() and main(). The sortWords() function is used to sort the words of a string.

In the main() function, we read a string from the user and sort the words of string using the sortWords() function and print the sorted string on the console screen.

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