Can someone please explain to me what's wrong with the following, and more importantly why?
int main( int argc, char *argv[] )
{
char array[] = "array";
char **test;
test = &array;
*test[0] = 'Z';
printf( "%s\n", array );
return 0;
}
EDIT
My example above was based on a function like this that was crashing:
void apple( char **pp )
{
*pp = malloc( 123 );
*pp[0] = 'a'; // technically this is correct but in bad form
*pp[1] = 'b'; // incorrect but no crash
*pp[2] = '\0'; // incorrect and crash
}
As pointed out to me by Vaughn Cato although *pp[0] = 'a';
does not crash it is in bad form. The correct form is the parenthesis
void apple( char **pp )
{
*pp = malloc( 123 );
(*pp)[0] = 'a'; // correct
(*pp)[1] = 'b'; // correct
(*pp)[2] = '\0'; // correct
}
Also as another poster MK pointed out the FAQ covers the difference between arrays and pointers: http://www.lysator.liu.se/c/c-faq/c-2.html
This would be the way to do what you seem to be trying to do:
int main( int argc, char *argv[] )
{
char array[] = "array";
char (*test)[6];
test = &array;
(*test)[0] = 'Z';
printf( "%s\n", array );
return 0;
}
test is a pointer to an array, and an array is different from a pointer, even though C makes it easy to use one like the other in my cases.
If you wanted to avoid having to specify a specific sized array, you could use a different approach:
int main( int argc, char *argv[] )
{
char array[] = "array";
char *test;
test = array; // same as test = &array[0];
test[0] = 'Z';
printf( "%s\n", array );
return 0;
}
test = &array
is wrong because test is of type char**
and &array
is a char(*)[6]
and is a different type from char**
An array isn't the same type as char*
although C will implicitly convert between an array type and a char*
in some contexts, but this isn't one of them. Basically the expectation that char*
is the same as the type of an array (e.g: char[6]
) is wrong and therefore the expectation that taking the address of an array will result in a char**
is also wrong.
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