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From: roy@phri.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: pointers to arrays
Message-ID: <2510@phri.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 21-Nov-86 22:02:52 EST
Article-I.D.: phri.2510
Posted: Fri Nov 21 22:02:52 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 22-Nov-86 06:51:23 EST
References: <273@bms-at.UUCP> <1138@genrad.UUCP> <274@bms-at.UUCP>
Reply-To: roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith)
Organization: Public Health Research Inst. (NY, NY)
Lines: 30
Summary: And you wondered *why* people are confused about pointers and arrays?


	Last week I was visiting with relatives.  Didn't have much to do so
I started flipping through some green-bar that was laying around.  Turned
out to be a C program.  It had the comment "in C, arrays don't have to be
rectangular".  The author of the program is an ex-physicist, ex-Fortran
hacker, nouveau-Lisp hacker who is a civilian employee of the Army working
on machine vision.  The ensuing conversation went something like:

Me: Hey, Bob, what do you mean "arrays don't have to be rectangular"?

Bob: They don't.  In C you can have a two dimensional array with each line
	a different size, using dynamic	memory allocation.

Me: Uh, you mean an array of pointers, don't you?

Bob: It's the same thing.

Me: No it's not.

Bob: That's what they taught us.

Me: Who taught you that?  Whoever taught you that should be shot!

Bob: DEC did.  We all went to a class in C programming DEC gave.
-- 
Roy Smith, {allegra,cmcl2,philabs}!phri!roy
System Administrator, Public Health Research Institute
455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016

"you can't spell deoxyribonucleic without unix!"