Gonna Die ...help Urgent

[marsguy85]

Hello friends i have to do the following thing and i am still learning ANSI C .
Can anyone tell me how to go about it . please.
thanks
---------------------------------------
write a program to provide predictive text input. As a user types words of a sentence the application should suggest (attempt to predict) the word to be typed.
The user should be given the option of selecting the predicted word input or continuing to input the word.
A typical output is shown below. Bold represents user inputs. Note after each prompt from the application a new line of text is output.

i.e
“T” the-1, there-2, that-3, select or continue! “1”
“The c” cat-1 coat-2, select or continue! “o”
“The co” cook-1 clock-2, cot-3, select or continue! “s”
etc


Guide :
Create a file to hold a dictionary of words. (use notepad to create the file.)

I must create and use a number of functions.

I must use pointers when comparing strings, and cant use the library function strcmp.



I am free to make sensible assumptions/modifications to the specification in order to improve my program.

** the program is meant for only showing one line for example - JAVA IS THE BEST LANGUAGE.
so how should my txt file look like for it ? also how will i use it in the code.
PLEASE PLEASE help me .... TAKE IT AS CHARITY WORK .
coz i am new to C. there are many great C ppl out there who can wirte the code easily .
i am now suffering from insomnia and stress as i cant get this thing .
please release me from my worries by helping. any good person .

[DeMan]

Have you thought about using a dictionary tree rather than a flat file. Dictionary trees basically have childeren nodes as different letters or a terminating character. A (simple) dictionary tree, containing (cap, cat, cede, cent, cup) may look like this (sorry I hope it is readable):

                                                          c
                                                    /     |      \
                                                   a       e      u
                                                /   |      / \       \
                                                p   t     d  n       p
                                                /    |     |  |       |
                                                *     *     e  t      *
                                                            |  |
                                                            *  *
 

Each node can have up to 27 nodes (and you can modify it to hold a string rather than a character in the leaf nodes once the remaining characters in a String are unique. Each word has a unique path through the tree and a good implementation would be ideal for preemptive text.
As an added bonus, you can save filespace in storing such a tree. (Take care) You wouldnot need to save every word rather than 1 entire traversal of the tree.

[DeMan]

Added to the Above:


As an added bonus, you can save filespace in storing such a tree. (Take care) You would not need to save every word rather than 1 entire traversal of the tree. Of course if the file HAS to be created in notepad, you could still use such a file to populate a tree as above (which for project purposes could be stored in memory).

Finally, I assume that this is for an assignment. Unless you explicilty HAVE to use c, why not use JAVA. If you quickly want to get some code together, JAVA is good because it provides many useful and simple to use functions. While it may be true that these functions make JAVA cumbersome/slow to use, assignments are rarely on the same scale as real-world applications (and not surprisingly since you would only have days to complete). This is why many Universities/Colleges/call them what you will, encourage the use of JAVA, it is simpler to make larg(ish) projects quickly, and it ultimately still teaches you the fundamentals of programming. Anyway, point is, if this is an assignment that only needs to be able to deal with 1 line of text, and if you have the choice, I think JAVA would be an easier option for you.

[marsguy85]

Thanks a lot , yes i did consider the tree type , will work on that now. Have 3 others assessments to hand in in a week including that one , so i am really fucked up .
No its a C assessment only cant use java in there , i know java is a lot easier than C.
Can you help me wid how the pointers and function might look like .
what i understand is one string will be compared with next one and then the word will be called from the txt file .