Can't work my way around pointers here

Hi guys..
This is the code i've written for strend() defined as:-


This function returns 1 if the string t occurs at the end of the string s and 0 if not.

Here is my code:




This code returns 0 even though the input should return 1. A dry run of the code seems to be correct.

Please help.
Thanks in advance.

In
if(0 == *s)

What if at the same time 0 == *t ? Then you'd have a match. This line instead improves your example result:

if(!(*s) && (*t)) return 1;

Never mind. You didn't initialize pos . Your program is wrong wrong wrong. Don't feel badly, I love you all the same.

Now look. Is your comment (found in your post, not the code) accurate?Do you care the strings match anywhere else? Your code sort of indicates that you care, which absolutely disagrees with the remark.

If you intend to look for a match at "the left end" then check from the left end only. If, on the other hand, you only care about matches on "the right end" then you need to check backward from s[strlen(s)-1] and from t[strlen(t)-1] making sure that your index is non-negative.

Don't worry, you're both lovable and charming. But as written, your program can overrun t because it lacks a test that the remainder of s is at least as long as t.

Rethink, rewrite, test more cases.

*capable. You're capable. Charming unknown to me.

I concur with b49P23TIvg. I think you're trying to make your function overly complex.

Now, this is mainly my training and work experience talking here, but I would be inclined to use a finite state machine, which are commonly implemented with a switch statement. Based on the input, you transition from one state to another, such that the particular state that you find yourself in effectively "remembers" how you got there. We use them all the time to parse input streams from serial ports, part of which function is to detect the start-character sequence of the message being received.

For example with the general problem of finding a substring in a string (your condition of it having to be on the end renders your problem trivial, as b49P23TIvg has pointed out), the initial state would be "no match" so its action is to test the next character of s against the first character of t. If there is a match, then you transition to the second state, "one match"; else you do not transition. BTW, in each iteration through the machine, the input is the next character in s (so to implement it the switch would be inside a for-loop). In the "one match" state, you compare the next character of s to the second character of t, stepping to the "two match" state if they match. Otherwise, you'd test whether it's matching the first character of t, in case a new substring is starting; if not, then you transition back to the initial "no match" state. Once you reach the "all match" state, then you can return reporting having found a match.

A handy thing about FSMs is how you design them. You sketch a diagram of states and transition edges connecting them. If you're in school, you'll get this theory in your 3rd or 4th year, especially in compiler design because this is what parsers use.

@b49P23TIvg
About that *t being equal to 0, that is the point you know.
The condition
while(*s == *t) {--}
checks that both characters are equal and
if(*s == '\0') checks
that the string s ends along with t (if they don't end together, then the match is found somewhere in between, which is not what i want. So it is ignored).
Thus ur statement
if(!(*s) && (*t)) return 1; will NOT let it return 1 when s ends after getting a match with t (at the end of string).

Also it is the "right end" that is considered. For that i could have
started from ( srtlen(s) -1 ) but i thought this code is cleaner and smarter.. . Dont judge me.

The most important thing you pointed out was *pos not being initialized. As soon as i did that, the code rendered output correctly as expected. This mistake was pretty foolish, i know.

The code was all wrong wrong wrong.. i know. Hence i asked for help you know. Thanks for you gesture.

This main program prints the line
101

Is that what you intend? (I initialized
pos=s;
in strend)


Note that the FSM is a built in function of j.

b49P23TIvg

About those outputs..
*u = "the" which is not what *s ends with. Hence 0.
*v = "abc" which is what *s ends with. Hence 1.
For any variable,
*w = "bca" which is present in *s but doesn't end with it, the o/p is 0.
The code works fine until your input of *t was given.
The mistake, i found, was, in the positioning of the condition checking (*s == '\0'). I have now put it before incrementing s and t. Now the code is working fine again.
For,
*t = "mabababcabcmabababcabc" the o/p is 0 as string
*s = "mabababcabc" can't end with a string bigger than itself.



Thank you so much for pointing out the mistake. And i will be more careful posting things in the future.

Regards,
Mrigank.