printing different parts of character array

Question

Hey I have a character array here that is suppose to print the different parts of a hangman game

char HANG_STATES[7][10 * 9] = 
{
    "             +         +----     +----     +----     +----     +----     +----     +----  ",
    "             |         |         |   O     |   O     |   O     |   O     |   O     |   O  ",
    "             |         |         |         |   +     | --+     | --+--   | --+--   | --+--",
    "             |         |         |         |   |     |   |     |   |     |   |     |   |  ",
    "             |         |         |         |         |         |         |  /      |  / \\ ",
    "             |         |         |         |         |         |         |         |      ",
    "/*****\\   /*****\\   /*****\\   /*****\\   /*****\\   /*****\\   /*****\\   /*****\\   /*****\\   "
};

I thought it'd be like looping through rows and columns, but I've had no success with it so far. My question is, how can I print the 5th instance in this character array?

Answer 1

You've got 9 different states, so you need an array of 9 drawings. One approach to the problem is to represent each drawing as a single string. Embedding newline characters '\n' in the string allows the string to cover multiple lines on the display.

The key concept that allows this to work: string concatenation. In C, when two double quoted strings are separated by zero or more whitespace characters, they are treated as one string. For example:
char *str = "Hello, " "world" "!"; is the same as char *str = "Hello, world!";

In the code below, each drawing is on multiple lines, but is a single string. The comma on the bottom line of a drawing marks the end of the string. So each drawing can be output with a single printf as shown in main at the end of the code.

#include <stdio.h>

char *HANG_STATES[9] =
{
    "           \n"
    "           \n"
    "           \n"
    "           \n"
    "           \n"
    "           \n"
    "/*****\\   \n",   // <-- comma marks the end of the string

    "   +       \n"
    "   |       \n"
    "   |       \n"
    "   |       \n"
    "   |       \n"
    "   |       \n"
    "/*****\\   \n",

    "   +----   \n"
    "   |       \n"
    "   |       \n"
    "   |       \n"
    "   |       \n"
    "   |       \n"
    "/*****\\   \n",

    "   +----   \n"
    "   |   O   \n"
    "   |       \n"
    "   |       \n"
    "   |       \n"
    "   |       \n"
    "/*****\\   \n",

    "   +----   \n"
    "   |   O   \n"
    "   |   +   \n"
    "   |   |   \n"
    "   |       \n"
    "   |       \n"
    "/*****\\   \n",

    "   +----   \n"
    "   |   O   \n"
    "   | --+   \n"
    "   |   |   \n"
    "   |       \n"
    "   |       \n"
    "/*****\\   \n",

    "   +----   \n"
    "   |   O   \n"
    "   | --+-- \n"
    "   |   |   \n"
    "   |       \n"
    "   |       \n"
    "/*****\\   \n",

    "   +----   \n"
    "   |   O   \n"
    "   | --+-- \n"
    "   |   |   \n"
    "   |  /    \n"
    "   |       \n"
    "/*****\\   \n",

    "   +----   \n"
    "   |   O   \n"
    "   | --+-- \n"
    "   |   |   \n"
    "   |  / \\ \n"
    "   |       \n"
    "/*****\\   \n",
};

int main(void)
{
    for (int state = 0; state < 9; state++)
        printf("%s\n\n", HANG_STATES[state]);
}