Pointer to 2D arrays in C

Question

I know there is several questions about that which gives good (and working) solutions, but none IMHO which says clearly what is the best way to achieve this. So, suppose we

Answer 1

Ok, this is actually four different question. I'll address them one by one:

are both equals for the compiler? (speed, perf...)

Yes. The pointer dereferenciation and decay from type int (*)[100][280] to int (*)[280] is always a noop to your CPU. I wouldn't put it past a bad compiler to generate bogus code anyways, but a good optimizing compiler should compile both examples to the exact same code.

is one of these solutions eating more memory than the other?

As a corollary to my first answer, no.

what is the more frequently used by developers?

Definitely the variant without the extra (*pointer) dereferenciation. For C programmers it is second nature to assume that any pointer may actually be a pointer to the first element of an array.

what is the best way, the 1st or the 2nd?

That depends on what you optimize for:

• Idiomatic code uses variant 1. The declaration is missing the outer dimension, but all uses are exactly as a C programmer expects them to be.

• If you want to make it explicit that you are pointing to an array, you can use variant 2. However, many seasoned C programmers will think that there's a third dimension hidden behind the innermost *. Having no array dimension there will feel weird to most programmers.