What does that mean in c? char *array[]= { “**”, “**”, “**” };

Question

In some code that I read, there was an initializing statement like this

char *array[]= { \"something1\", \"something2\", \"something3\" };

Answer 1

char * in C is a string.

array is the name of the variable being declared.

[] indicates that it is an array.

{ "something1", "something2", "something3" } is initializing the contents of the array.

Accessing elements is done like so:

array[0] gives the 1st element - "something1".

array[1] gives the 2nd element - "something2".

etc.

Note:

As was pointed out in the comments, char * isn't technically a string.

It's a pointer to a char. You can visualize a string in memory like so:

<-------------------------->
..134|135|136|137|138|139|..
<-------------------------->
  'H'|'e'|'l'|'l'|'o'|'\0'
<-------------------------->

This block of memory (locations 134-139) is holding the string of characters.

For example:

array[0] actually returns a pointer to the first character in "something1".

You use the fact that the characters are sequentially in memory to access the rest of the string in various ways:

/* ch points to the 's' */
char* ch = array[0];

/* ch2 points to the 'e' */
char* ch2 = ch + 3;

/* ch3 == 'e' */
char ch3 = *ch2;

/* ch4 == 'e' */
char ch4 = *(ch + 3);

/* ch5 == 'e' */
char ch5 = ch[3];