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From: jsdy@hadron.UUCP (Joseph S. D. Yao)
Newsgroups: net.lang.c
Subject: Re: Address of array
Message-ID: <339@hadron.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 27-Mar-86 01:02:19 EST
Article-I.D.: hadron.339
Posted: Thu Mar 27 01:02:19 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 29-Mar-86 05:57:49 EST
References: <750@abic.UUCP> <2293@utcsri.UUCP> <313@hadron.UUCP> <2377@utcsri.UUCP>
Reply-To: jsdy@hadron.UUCP (Joseph S. D. Yao)
Organization: Hadron, Inc., Fairfax, VA
Lines: 35
Summary: Right, up to a point ...

In article <2377@utcsri.UUCP> greg@utcsri.UUCP (Gregory Smith) writes:

a very clear exposition of where I went wrong when I said:

>>               There is no such thing as a pointer to the whole
>>array:  that is a Pasqualische or Fortranian notion.  Pointers, in
>>C, only point to atomic or aggregate (structure/union) objects.

up to the point where he slips off the track:

>                                                       Anyway, array names
>are not always constants; any array which is local to a function has an address
>which is relative to the frame pointer. Also, in
>	struct foo{ int foodle; char foo_line[80]; } *foo_ptr;
>the ARRAY foo_ptr->foo_line doesn't have a constant address, does it?

Well ... this is true, but only the sense that  a n y  address is
relative to the address space in which it lives.  Something is not
a constant if it can be changed, right?  But you cannot say:
	foo_ptr->foo_line++
or
{
	int x[XSIZ];

	x++;
}

Despite the fact that I stupidly said there ain't no array pointers
(and I should know better, I've found where I'd written otherwise!),
I still insist that, the way C treats them right now, the model for
arrays is a pointer constant.  In stack and struct, this translates
to a pointer constant  o f f s e t .
-- 

	Joe Yao		hadron!jsdy@seismo.{CSS.GOV,ARPA,UUCP}