A two-dimensional array is used to create an array of strings consider the statement

char name [30] [10];

Here 30 indicates the number of strings and 10 indicates the maximum length of each string. This is also used to create a table ‘Table of strings. The two dimensional character array shown below can store a table. For example:

char city [5] [20] ={“Cuttack”, “Berhampur”, “Sambalpur”, “Puri”, “Bhubaneswar”};
    To access the name of the list, we must write,
    city [i] where i = 0 to 4. Thus
    city [0] indicates Cuttack,
    city [1] to Berhampur,
    city [2] to Sambalpur,
    city [3] to puri and 
    city [4] to Bhubaneswar.

It may be observed that the table thus created using a two dimensional character is nothing but a column of strings. One fine example to illustrate the use of two dimensional array of strings is name sorting. Here is a program to perform this task.

Program – program to sort strings of names

#include <stdio.h>
void main ()
{ 
    char names [20] [10], temp [10], c;
    int i, j, k, n;
    clrscr (); 
    n = 0;
    printf (“Enter names one per line\n”);
    printf (“Terminate with string END\n”);
    scanf (“%s”, names [n]);
    while (strcmp (names[n], “END”)>0)
   
    {
        n++;
        scanf (“%s”, names[n]);
    }
    printf(“\n”);
    for (i=0; i <n; i ++)
    printf (“%10s”, names[i]);
    printf (“\n”);
    printf (“\n”);
    printf (“Total names = %d\n”, n);
    /*selection sorting*/
    for (i=0; i<n-1; i ++)
        for (j=i+1; j<n; j++)
        {
            if (strcmp (names [1], names [j])>0)
            {
                Strcpy (temp, names [i]);
                Strcpy (names [i], names [j]);
                Strcpy (names[j], temp);
            }
        }
    printf (“\nSorted Names:\n”);
    for (i = 0; i <n; i++) 
    printf (“%10s”, names [i]);
    printf(“\n”);
        getch ();
}

Output

Enter names one per line 
Terminate with string END
santosh 
alok
amiya
bikram
prafulla
santosh     alok        amiya       bikram      Prafulla
Total names = 5
Sorted names:
    alok        amiya       bikram      prafulla    santosh 

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