Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ncrlnk!ncr-sd!hp-sdd!hplabs!hpl-opus!hpccc!brown
From: brown@hpccc.HP.COM (Jeffrey L. Brown)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: char ***pointer;
Message-ID: <5060031@hpccc.HP.COM>
Date: 14 Nov 88 23:59:09 GMT
References: <360@mjbtn.MFEE.TN.US>
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Corporate Computing Center
Lines: 45

/ hpccc:comp.sys.ibm.pc / root@mjbtn.MFEE.TN.US (Mark J. Bailey) /  4:29 pm  Nov 13, 1988 /
Hello,

I have a question for the C gurus out there.  It has to do with a pointer
declaration and its subsequent use.

I have declared:

	char	***pointer;

Now I know that *ch is generally pointing to the start of a string, ie,
a list (array) of characters.  **ch would be equal to say a list of lists
(or an array of strings, ie, **argv, for example).  ***ch would support
a list of lists of lists of characters.  I suppose this could be associated
with a two dimensional array of strings.

My biggest question here is, when I declare a *ch and then call malloc
to allocate a space for it to point to, I have a string.  I can ch++ to
move up the string.  But when I have **ch, and subsequently, ***ch, do
I have to call malloc to allocate space for more pointers?

For example (using pointer above),

pointer = (char ***) malloc((x)*sizeof(char *));

to allocate space for the *LIST* of pointers I am wanting to use?    

< rest of stuff deleted>

---------------------

You are right about this method not working.  What you said was "give me a
one-dimensional array with x elements the size of char pointers.  When I use it
though, I will look 2 indirections through the array for my data, even though
the pointers will go into space...."  I get the idea that you want
to support a table of pointers to strings, aka typedef char *STRING and
STRING table[][].  I don't think my skill is refined enough to explain what to
do and make it understandable.  "Programming in C," by Lawrence Miller and
Alexander Quilici, gives a very readable discussion on manipulating dynamic
arrays of malloced strings; I think it would be easy to extend what they say
to fit your problem.  In particular, see chapter 8 which discusses how to 
allocate, traverse, and generally exploit these beasties.

Jeff Brown
HP Corporate Computing Center
brown%hpccc@hplabs.hp.com