Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!gatech!hubcap!ncrcae!ncrlnk!uunet!auspex!guy
From: guy@auspex.UUCP (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: pointers to arrays
Message-ID: <1042@auspex.UUCP>
Date: 18 Feb 89 09:37:36 GMT
References: <19784@uflorida.cis.ufl.EDU>
Reply-To: guy@auspex.UUCP (Guy Harris)
Organization: Auspex Systems, Santa Clara
Lines: 23

>Pointers are usually used to modify things, and &E I believe would
>be used to modify the address of the array since that's what E
>is (the address of the array).

You may believe that, but you're wrong; in the language described by the
pANS, "E" is not the address of the array, "E" is the array itself. 
(This may be an oversimplification, but I think it gets the essential
point.)  In most contexts an array-valued expression is converted to an
expression that points to the first element of the array, but "operand
of 'sizeof'" and "operand of unary &" are contexts where it isn't
converted. 

Pointers are usually used to modify things, and you can definitely
modify an array by assigning to elements of that array:

	int (*foo)[13];
	int bar[13];

	foo = &bar;
	(*foo)[7] = 666;

should work in an ANSI C program once ANSI C exists and programs can be
written in it and compiled by ANSI C-conformant compilers.