c - Sorting Strings Using qsort to Check If They Are Anagram

Question

static int myCompare (const void * a, const void * b)
{
    return strcmp (*(const char **) a, *(const char **) b);
}

void sort1(const char *str1[],int n1)
{
    qsort (str1,n1,sizeof (const char *), myCompare);

}
void sort2(const char *str2[], int n2)
{
    qsort( str2, n2, sizeof (const char *),myCompare);
}

int main ()
{
    const char *str1[] = {"listen"};
    const char *str2[] = {"silent"};

    int n1 = sizeof(str1)/sizeof(str1[0]);
    int n2 = sizeof(str2)/sizeof(str2[0]);

    sort1(str1,n1);
    sort2(str2,n2);

    int x = strcmp(*str1,*str2);

    if(x==0) 
     printf("
 Both The Strings Are Anagram
");

    else
    printf("
 Strings Are Not Anagram 
"); 
    return 0;
}

I wish to sort the strings and then compare them, to check if they are Anagram.

The Problem is Strings do not get sorted.

Answer 1

If what you need is to check if two strings are anagrams by sorting them, you could place the strings in single dimensional character arrays like

char str1[]="silent";
char str2[]="listen";

qsort(str1, strlen(str1), sizeof(str1[0]), cmp);
qsort(str2, strlen(str2), sizeof(str2[0]), cmp);

where cmp() is a function

int cmp(const void *a, const void *b)
{
    return *(const char *)a - *(const char *)b;
}

After the qsort() calls, use strcmp() like

if(strcmp(str1, str2)==0)
{
    //anagrams
}

Read about qsort() here and here.

---

Note that in

const char *str1[] = {"listen"};

the string cannot be modified and likewise in the case of

char *str1[]={"listen"};

only in this case, you might get a run-time error as it is a string literal. See this post.