62.C Program to Sort Elements in Lexicographical Order (Dictionary Order)

C Program to Sort Elements in Lexicographical Order (Dictionary Order)

This program sorts the 10 strings (entered by the user) in lexicographical order (dictionary order).

To understand this example, you should have the knowledge of following C programming topics:

• C Programming Multidimensional Arrays
• C Programming Strings
• String Manipulations In C Programming Using Library Functions

This program takes 10 words(strings) from the user and sorts them in lexicographical order.

Example: Program to Sort Strings in Dictionary Order

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

int main()
{
    int i, j;
    char str[10][50], temp[50];

    printf("Enter 10 words:\n");

    for(i=0; i<10; ++i)
        scanf("%s[^\n]",str[i]);


    for(i=0; i<9; ++i)
        for(j=i+1; j<10 ; ++j)
        {
            if(strcmp(str[i], str[j])>0)
            {
                strcpy(temp, str[i]);
                strcpy(str[i], str[j]);
                strcpy(str[j], temp);
            }
        }

    printf("\nIn lexicographical order: \n");
    for(i=0; i<10; ++i)
    {
        puts(str[i]);
    }

    return 0;
}

Output

Enter 10 words:
C
C++
Java
PHP
Python
Perl
Ruby
R
JavaScript
PHP

In lexicographical order: 
C
C++
Java
JavaScript
PHP
PHP
Perl
Python
R
Ruby

To solve this program, a two-dimensional string str is created.

This string can hold maximum of 10 strings and each string can have maximum of 50 characters (including null character).

To compare two strings, strcmp() function is used. Also, we used strcpy() function to copy string to a temporary string temp.

Check out these related examples:

• C Program to Copy String Without Using strcpy()
• C Program to Remove all Characters in a String Except Alphabet
• C Program Swap Numbers in Cyclic Order Using Call by Reference