easy ? regarding area of a triangle

[Dewey1040]

ok this code gets three sides of a triangle and prints out the area... but it just prints out that the area is 0 every time... why?

#include <stdio.h>
#include <math.h>

double area(int a, int b, int c);
int main(int argc, char *argv[]){
  int a, b, c;

  printf("\nSide A: ");
  scanf("%d", &a);

  printf("\nSide B: ");
  scanf("%d", &b);

  printf("\nSide C: ");
  scanf("%d", &c);

  printf("\nThe area of the triangle is: %f\n", area(a, b, c));

  return(0);
}
double area( int a, int b, int c ){
  int s;
  double y;

  s = (a + b + c)/2;
  y = sqrt( s * (s - a)*(s - b)*(s - c) );

  return( y );
}

[nucleon]

It doesn't always return zero. (Try 4, 5, 6.) But you should probably make at least s a double, and probably also a, b, and c.

[csurfer]

Here are some points which might help...

1)The program is perfectly alright and is running without any changes in it (In windows).

2)While running it through command prompt or in a shell it might cause some problems(may be i dont know) because of your argc and argv (why not just say main(void) as you are not taking any input from command line.)

3)The formula for s is not for all lengths which come to your mind.It should form a triangle, only then can you expect an answer (Keep in mind the rule "SUM OF TWO SIDE OF A TRIANGLE SHOULD ALWAYS BE GREATER THAN THE THIRD SIDE"...it applies to all sides...)

[uskok]

ok this code gets three sides of a triangle and prints out the area... but it just prints out that the area is 0 every time... why?

Because you aren't using data types properly. When you say s = (a + b + c)/2; , it's integer = integer / integer . You lose information in a case where a+b+c is not an even number. Make s a double, and put a decimal point after 2 to make it a constant of the type double. s = (a + b + c)/2.;

3)The formula for s is not for all lengths which come to your mind.It should form a triangle, only then can you expect an answer (Keep in mind the rule "SUM OF TWO SIDE OF A TRIANGLE SHOULD ALWAYS BE GREATER THAN THE THIRD SIDE"...it applies to all sides...)

Each of the conditions a+b>c , a+c>b and b+c>a corresponds to one bracket in area = sqrt( s * (s - a)*(s - b)*(s - c) ) . If any of those conditions is not satisfied, one of the brackets will be zero or less, (a,b,c) will not be a triangle and the area will be undefined. Ie. the formula gives a correct answer in any case.
So, the only thing you need to do is to check whether the returned value is a positive number. If it's not, slap the user for wrong input.

Basically, you were getting 0 as output because s was calculated incorrectly, and the formula for area calculation saw that one of the sides equalled s (which gave you s-a = 0 -> area = 0)