filling 2d char array and accessing each element

Question

It's my first question in stack overflow so if there is some mistakes sorry about that. I'm trying to fill a 2d char array and then access each letter. I complied my code, there is no error but when I try to run it doesn't work. Here it's my code.

#include<iostream>
#include<string>
#include<stdlib.h>

using namespace std;


int main() {

    char ch[] = "Welcome text in a separate line.";
    char strWords[5][7];
    int counter = 0;
    int a = 0;

    for (int i = 0; i < sizeof(ch); i++) {

        if (ch[i] == ' ') {
            strWords[counter][a] = '\0';
            counter++;
            a = 0;
        }
        else
        {
            strWords[counter][a] += ch[i];
            a++;
        }

    }

    for (int i = 0; i <= 5; i++) {

        for (int a = 0; a <= 7; a++) {
            cout << strWords[i][a] << "  ";

        }
    }




    return 0;
}

Answer 1

A few things wrong with your code

int main() {

    char ch[] = "Welcome text in a separate line.";
    // char strWords[5][7]; <<<=== i would change to be larger that you need, just in case
    char strWords[20][20];
    int counter = 0;
    int a = 0;

    for (int i = 0; i < strlen(ch); i++) { // sizeof is wrong, you need strlen

        if (ch[i] == ' ') {
            strWords[counter][a] = '\0';
            counter++;
            a = 0;
        }
        else
        {
            //strWords[counter][a] += ch[i];
            strWords[counter][a] = ch[i]; // you do not need to try to concatenate, you are already walking down the buffer with 'a'
            a++;
        }

    }

    for (int i = 0; i < counter; i++) { // use 'counter' as it has the number of lines
       // since you 0 terminated the string you do not need to walk character by character

         cout << strWords[i] << "  ";

    }


    return 0;
}

You are also not detecting and terminating the last word (since there is no space after it). I will leave that to you. The code I show does not print the word 'line.'

You should really have tests to make sure you do not overflow the length or number of words.

Plus you should ideally use std::string and std::vector

Note - if, for experimentation, you do want to walk through char by char to output the strings you should look for the terminating '0' character and exit the inner loop