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From: tps@chem.ucsd.edu (Tom Stockfisch)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: confusion with char *a and char a[NUM]
Message-ID: <928@chem.ucsd.EDU>
Date: 7 Dec 90 07:12:09 GMT
References: <7656@umd5.umd.edu> <14638@smoke.brl.mil> <28339@mimsy.umd.edu>
Reply-To: tps@chem.ucsd.edu (Tom Stockfisch)
Organization: Chemistry Dept, UC San Diego
Lines: 34

In article <28339@mimsy.umd.edu> chris@mimsy.umd.edu (Chris Torek) writes:
>In article <14638@smoke.brl.mil> gwyn@smoke.brl.mil (Doug Gwyn) writes:
>>ARRAYS ARE NOT POINTERS.

>... I took a random sample of the `C books' shelf and
>read what each had to say about pointers and arrays.
>I had time for only two books.  They were both wrong in at least one
>specific, and both gave the wrong idea.

>Part of the problem, then, with people's understanding of arrays and
>pointers in C is that there has been a profusion of books about C,
>many of which continue to promote myths about pointers and arrays.
>Remember:  Being in print does not make it true.


Yeah, like K&R I, p. 111:
	
	"argv is a pointer to an array of pointers" *

I believe this is in Edition II, as well.

I think there is an excellent explanation for the confusion about arrays and
pointers:  the "base document" for C didn't always get it right.
I was hopelessly confused about pointers/arrays until I got Harbison & Steele's
tome.  I don't think it's a fault in the language, just in its original
explication.


* note to authors writing new C books:  "argv" is actually a
  "pointer to pointer to char", or, more descriptively, a "pointer to the
  first element of an array of pointers".
-- 

|| Tom Stockfisch, UCSD Chemistry	tps@chem.ucsd.edu