String character counter

[small rose]

Hello, I need help with making a code that will output a character that is most repeating in string given as input. In case of having multiple of those, then output character with the lowest ASCII code.

I dont know the concept behind the repeating characters except in the case of making a double for loop that would be a counter for a certain character i input previously.

[indigo vale]

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[olive cloak]

You could make an array of counters int counters[256]; (one for every possible character)

Or std::map<char, int> (in C++, didn't notice this was C)

[cosmic sedge]

a hashmap for this problem is an overkill

also this is c not c++

[olive cloak]

Crap, didn't notice 😩
It's not a hash map tho

[cosmic sedge]

oh ok i don't really know c++ :v

oh map is literally what it says... A map

[olive cloak]

It's usually either a red-black tree or an AVL tree

[small rose]

sorry for the non english ooga language

[small rose]

heres the sketch for the code, what I describe needs to be in this function

[olive cloak]

Mkay?

[small rose]

so how to do it?

i think i know how to do ascii code part

[olive cloak]

Create the array of counters (e.g. int counters[256];)

[cosmic sedge]

you can use macro in scanf directly

[olive cloak]

Make a loop over every character in the string. For every character, increment the respective counter

You can use a char as an index for an array. char ch = ...;, counters[ch]++

(Though it should probably be counters[(unsigned char)]++;, because otherwise characters can be negative, and you'll go out of bounds. But you don't have to think about this right now)

[ebon scroll]

You will need to initialise this array too.

char s[MAKS_DUZINA_NISKE] = {0};

Making this an array of chars will problably work, as it is unlikely that any string you enter has any character repeating itself 127 times.
Still, for clarity and correctness, I would make this an integer array instead.
For bonus points, you could even make it an unsigned int array seeing as the count will never be negative.

[small rose]

all this sounds good but I dont understand what they did in main... I dont know what 32 element format array is. Your description for array sized 256 already exists in main as far as I can see.

[small rose]

its in the main function and i am not allowed to change the main function

max array len is already defined. I dont understand what format array is supposed to be and that sprintf function?

max array len -1 i do understand as it wants all elements except the null terminator

[main skiff]

scanf accepts format strings like: %5s, which means accept a maximum of 5 characters.
What the sprintf is doing is creating a format string for scanf, max_array_length in this case is 256, so the format would be %255s.
This is needed so it doesn't overflow the array.

[ebon scroll]

Sorry, I misread.
It seems that variable s is the string receiving the user input.
All is not lost.
I think you are meant to create a counting array inside function most_used_char().

[ebon scroll]

i am not allowed to change the main function

In that case may I also suggest that - admirable as it is - you do not look at the main() function right now and concentrate on implementing function most_used_char().
At least for now.

It's always good to be inquisitive, but perhaps after you completed your task. Because that's where you earn your grade.

[small rose]

not graded, im trying to practice on my own similar tasks that come up on exams. fortunate thing is that assistants made this website where I need to make specific changes to a function and then submit it to get results if i did it correctly.

But strings and arrays are by far the hardest data types Ive come across