Stock information data structure for c? -

i'm new c(less week), , trying figure out more effective way of retrieving data. imagine have few pieces of stock data: ticker, price, change.

my approach far has been put data in 3 arrays. if want price of ibm, search ticker array , index location location price array. works fine because lot of lookups , data doesn't change wondering if there maybe more effective way of doing this?

i tried dictionary/hashmap maybe store ibm key , array of price/change values, can't seem figure out how in c. if possible there simple way this? working on different program , don't want learn how create own scratch(although if have to, def. work on it).

try this: http://uthash.sourceforge.net/

the examples on front page pretty self explanatory.

struct stock {    float price, change;    char name[3];    ut_hash_handle hh; };  struct stock * stockshash = null;     struct stock * stockitem; hash_add_str(stockshash, name, stockitem ); hash_find_str(stockshash, "ibm", stockitem );  //edit void new_stock(struct stock * stockshash, char *name, float price, float change) {     struct stock *s;      s = malloc(sizeof(struct stock));     strncpy (s->name, name, 3);     s->price = price; s->change = change;     s->id = user_id;     hash_add_str( stockshash, name, s );   }  void update_stock (struct stock * stockshash, char *name,                     float price, float change) {     struct stock *s;     hash_find_str (stockshash, name, s);     if (s) {         s->price = price; s->change = change;     } }