Styjun

I have a Player struct that contains a GameBoard, which is a 2d array of chars.

When I use memset it does not set the array

I have tried using the address of the board (&, *) and without those symbols

I can get it to work if I use a pointer to the Player variable in 'initializeBoard' but the assignment says not to use a pointer

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <stdbool.h>

const int ROWS = 10;
const int COLS = 10;

const char *PLAYERONE = "Player 1";
const char *PLAYERTWO = "Player 2";
const char WATER = '~';
const int NUM_SHIPS = 5;

typedef struct gameBoard 
 char board[ROWS][COLS];
 GameBoard;

typedef struct human 
 char name[20];
 GameBoard gameBoard;
 Player;

// function prototypes

void displayGameBoard(Player player);
void initializeBoard(Player player);
void initializePlayer(Player *player, const char *name);






// main function
int main() 
 Player playerOne;
 Player playerTwo;
 // call function welcomeScreen

 initializePlayer(&playerOne, PLAYERONE);
 // end program
 return 0;


void displayGameBoard(Player player) 2 

void initializeBoard(Player player) 
 memset(*player.gameBoard.board, WATER, sizeof(player.gameBoard.board));


void initializePlayer(Player *player, const char *name) 
 char playerName[20];
 GameBoard playerBoard;
 strcpy(player->name, playerName);
 player->gameBoard = playerBoard;
 initializeBoard(*player);
 displayGameBoard(*player);

I expect the result to be filled with '~' but it either corrupts the whole terminal or prints blanks

Here:

void initializeBoard(Player player) 
 memset(*player.gameBoard.board, WATER, sizeof(player.gameBoard.board));

You are passing the Player object by copy rather than reference. The object you are setting, is not the object you intend to set, and is in any event temporary. Passing large structures on the stack is also inefficient (you may want to reconsider the signature of displayGameBoard() too in that case). Also the member board does not need to be dereferenced.

void initializeBoard(Player* player);

...

void initializeBoard(Player* player) 

 memset( player->gameBoard.board, WATER, sizeof(player->gameBoard.board));

Then call it in initializePlayer() thus:

initializeBoard(player);

The problem is, that you pass your Player-structure by value here:

initializeBoard(*player);

so you essentially are working on a copy. Pass a pointer and work on the original structure like this:

initializeBoard(player);

and change the initializeBoard-function to that:

void initializeBoard(Player *player) 
 memset(player->gameBoard.board, WATER, sizeof(player->gameBoard.board)); 

then it should work as expected. You should change the displayBoard() function, too, because there is no reason to pass by value and it is much more computation effort (copy the whole structure)