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From: sdejarne@polyslo.UUCP (Steve DeJarnett)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: C arrays of strings
Message-ID: <730@polyslo.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 24-Nov-87 15:26:46 EST
Article-I.D.: polyslo.730
Posted: Tue Nov 24 15:26:46 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 28-Nov-87 00:49:38 EST
References: <3157@rosevax.Rosemount.COM>
Reply-To: sdejarne@polyslo.UUCP (Steve DeJarnett)
Organization: Cal Poly State Univ,CSC Dept,San Luis Obispo,CA 93407
Lines: 54
Keywords: C
Summary: I hope I get this right!

In article <3157@rosevax.Rosemount.COM> richw@rosevax.Rosemount.COM (Rich Wagenknecht) writes:
>Could someone explain the following declaration in english and
>give an example of how to use it? I believe I can use this declaration
>but cannot explain how is works. What I'm after is simply an array of
>character strings.
>
>  char *str[12];

	This declaration gives you an array (12 members) of pointers-to-char.
There is no storage reserved for the character strings, only 32-bits (in most
cases) to hold the address of a character string.  This declaration is just
like the char *argv[] that you get from the command line of your program.  To
get space for the character strings, you would need to do something like:

	str[1] = (char *) malloc(100);     <--- gets you space for 100 chars.

Note:  both sides of the = sign have to represent the same thing (i.e. you 
don't want to go assigning an integer to a character (usually :-)).  To make
sure you have the right thing on both sides, cover up the part in the
declaration that you have in your equation:  In this case cover up the str[12]
in the declaration and the str[1] in the equation.  Whatever is left over on
the declaration line is what you have (in this case, a char pointer).  I hope
that made sense, but if not, ignore it.  

	Here is some code that uses char *str[12].


void func()
{
    char *str[12];
    char *malloc();
    int i;
    
    for (i=0;i<=12;i++)
      {
	str[i] = malloc(80);
	printf("enter a string> ");
	gets(str[i]);
      }

    for (i=0;i<=12;i++)
	printf(String %d = %s\n",i,str[i]);
    return;
}

	Hope this helps.


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| Steve DeJarnett		|    ...!ihnp4!csun!polyslo!sdejarne	      |
| Computer Systems Lab		|    ...!{csustan,csun,sdsu}!polyslo!sdejarne |
| Cal Poly State Univ		|    ...!ucbvax!voder!polyslo!sdejarne	      |
| San Luis Obispo, CA  93407	|    					      |
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