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From: ballou@brahms (Kenneth R. Ballou)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: pointers to arrays
Message-ID: <371@cartan.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: Wed, 19-Nov-86 03:50:21 EST
Article-I.D.: cartan.371
Posted: Wed Nov 19 03:50:21 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 19-Nov-86 22:27:37 EST
References: <273@bms-at.UUCP>
Sender: daemon@cartan.Berkeley.EDU
Reply-To: ballou@brahms (Kenneth R. Ballou)
Organization: Math Dept. UC Berkeley
Lines: 30
Keywords: What? Why? How?

In article <273@bms-at.UUCP> stuart@bms-at.UUCP (Stuart D. Gathman) writes:
>I am still confused about several things concerning pointers to arrays.
>
>There does seem to be such a type, even in K & R.
>
>1) How does one get such an animal?  The only methods I can figure are
>
>	a) a cast: ( type (*)[] ) array_of_type
Also, you could have:
	int (* foo) [10];

	foo = (int (*) [10]) malloc (4 * sizeof (int [10]))

Then, * foo, * (foo + 1), * (foo + 2), and * (foo + 3) would each have type
"array of 10 ints."

>	b) a function returning such a type (but the return must use a cast!)

No, this function could now say  return foo + 2;

>3) It seems to me that any distinction between a pointer to an array
>   and a pointer to its first element is purely semantic.

Nope, it affects address arithmetic.

--------
Kenneth R. Ballou		...!ucbvax!brahms!ballou
Department of Mathematics	ballou@brahms.berkeley.edu
University of California
Berkeley, California  94720