Are inline string arrays in C allocated on the stack?

Question

In C, consider the following "inline" string arrays:

char *string1 = "I'm a literal!";
char *string2 = malloc((strlen(string1) + 1) * sizeof(char));
//Do some string copying
...
char string3[] = {'a','b','c','\0'};
char *stringArray[] = {string1, string2, string3};

Would stringArray simply contain a copy of each of three pointers?

Would the array be allocated on the stack?

Answer 1

The stringArray is allocated on the stack, each of its element is a pointer to a char. To be more specific :

• string1 pointer is on the stack, its value is the address of the first character of a read-only string in the data segment
• string2 pointer is on the stack, its value is the address of a memory block allocated on the heap
• string3 is an array which occupies 4 * sizeof(char) bytes on the stack
• stringArray is an array which occupies 3 * sizeof(char *) bytes on the stack.