Array of char *

Question

I am having problems with array pointers. I've looked through Google and my attempts are futile so far.

What I would like to do is, I have a char name[256]. I will be 10 of those. Hence, I would need to keep track of each of them by pointers.

Trying to create a pointer to them.

int main()
{
    char superman[256] = "superman";
    char batman[256] = "batman";
    char catman[256] = "catman";
    char *names[10];
    names[0] = superman;
    names[1] = batman;
    system("pause");
    return 0;
}

How do I actually traverse an array of pointers?

Answer 1

names[0] is a char* to whatever you stored in names[0] (which in this case is a pointer to the first element in your superman array) thus your guess at e.g cout << names[0] << endl;is correct.

If you want to traverse that array, you need to know when to stop so you're not traversing pointers you havn't yet initialized- if you know you have initialized 2 of those pointers, you could do e.g.

for(int i = 0; i < 2 ; i++) {
  std::cout << names[i] << std::endl;
}

As an alternative, place a NULL pointer after the last element you have initialized(make sure there's room for that NULL pointer) e.g.

names[2] = NULL;
for(int i = 0; names[i] != NULL ; i++) {
  std::cout << names[i] << std::endl;
}