Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!unmvax!ncar!tank!mimsy!haven!ncifcrf!nlm-mcs!adm!smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn )
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: address of structure == address of first member? (long)
Message-ID: <8976@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Date: 24 Nov 88 06:38:00 GMT
References: <2172@iscuva.ISCS.COM> <8954@smoke.BRL.MIL> <2176@iscuva.ISCS.COM>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 17

In article <2176@iscuva.ISCS.COM> carlp@iscuva.ISCS.COM (Carl Paukstis) writes:
->>86	        code = strcmp (key, *(char **)((char *)table + (m * size)));
->Line 86 is okay, but you really don't need to cast to a (char**) then
->dereference to get the (char*) key.  That's extra work that amounts to
->a no-op.
-  Huh?  The type of the expression ((char *)table + (m * size)) is
-  "pointer to char", no?  And the usage on line 86 requires "pointer to
-  pointer to char".  If I dereference the subexpression above, e.g.
-  *((char *)table + (m * size)), the result type is "char", not "pointer
-  to char" as required by strcmp().  Or am I just being dense?

That's not what I said!

You already had a (char *).  You then cast it to (char **), and then
dereferenced that using the * operator.  There was no need for these
extra steps when the original (char *) was just what you needed.
(strcmp takes (char *) arguments.)