Write a C Program to Find Position of Words in a Crossword Puzzle

How can you find the position of words in a crossword puzzle using a C program?

What are the steps involved in creating a C program to find the position of words in a crossword puzzle?

Steps to Find Position of Words in a Crossword Puzzle using C Program:

Hi! In this lab, you will write a C program to find the position of W words in an N x M crossword puzzle that has been previously solved. Here's a step-by-step explanation on how to approach this task:

1. Include the necessary header files such as stdio.h, string.h, and stdlib.h.

2. Define a structure 'Position' to store the row and column coordinates of a word's starting position.

3. Create a function to read the crossword puzzle from a file or user input. Store the puzzle in a 2D character array.

4. Create a function to search for a word in the puzzle. This function should take the word and the puzzle as input and return the Position structure with the starting row and column of the word.

5. In the search function, use nested loops to iterate through the puzzle. For each character, check if it matches the first letter of the word.

6. If a match is found, search in all 8 possible directions (up, down, left, right, and diagonals) for the entire word. If the word is found, store its starting position in the Position structure and return it.

7. In the main function, read the values for W, N, and M, and create an array of strings to store the W words.

8. Read the words and crossword puzzle into their respective arrays.

9. Iterate through the words array, calling the search function for each word. Print the starting position of each word as you find it.

By following these steps, you can create a C program to find the position of W words in an N x M crossword puzzle that has been previously solved, with the values for W, N, M ranging from 5 up to 100. Good luck!