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From: allbery@ncoast.UUCP (Brandon Allbery)
Newsgroups: net.lang.c,net.micro.pc,net.unix
Subject: Pointers vs. arrays:  another dumb question...
Message-ID: <1242@ncoast.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 21-Jun-86 12:52:47 EDT
Article-I.D.: ncoast.1242
Posted: Sat Jun 21 12:52:47 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 24-Jun-86 04:02:40 EDT
References: <811@bu-cs.UUCP>
Reply-To: allbery@ncoast.UUCP (Brandon Allbery)
Followup-To: net.lang.c
Organization: North Coast Computer Resources
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Xref: linus net.lang.c:8752 net.micro.pc:8411 net.unix:7661

Expires:

Okay, I've another dumb question for everyone:

In an application I wrote, I use pointers to arrays.  Now:

If the array is malloc'ed, the correct cast is:

		(struct foo (*)[])

and you assign the ``pointer to the array'' to a variable.  But, if it's in
initialized data, you can't do it that way:  you can't take a ``pointer to an
array''.  So the cast is:

		(struct foo *)

BUT:  the arrangement in memory is identical!  It should be even on tagged
architectures, etc.; in fact, (struct foo *) is always wrong, and might
conceivably cause problems on a tagged architecture if you're really pointing
to an array.

So:  why isn't the correct type of an array name (struct foo (*)[])?  That
would make much more clear the meaning of the pointer, and would avoid many of
the pointer-vs.-array confusions.

--Brandon
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