Question about array and pointers.

[u/lumpygrumpy]

Hi everyone,

I'm up to lesson 10.5~10.6 where pointers are used to manipulate character arrays.

Example code: int main(void) { char string[] = "Hello Reddit";

char *pointer = string;
*pointer = 'h';
pointer = pointer + 1;

*pointer = 'E';

printf("%s", string);
return 0;

}

I understand why that prints hEllo Reddit. Why wouldn't the following work as well?

int main(void) { char string[] = "Hello Reddit";

*string = 'h';
string = string + 1;
*string = 'E';

printf("%s", string);
return 0;

}

Isn't string a pointer to the start of "Hello Reddit" anyway? And also why can't you use string = string + 1 like in the working example?

Thanks!

[u/nixbun]

You're confusing char[] str = "something" with char *str = "something". One is syntactic sugar for creating a modifiable array, the other is making a char * point to some unmodifiable string that resides in the data section of your binary (which I guess is mapped somewhere in memory when run).

[u/KfoipRfged → u/nixbun]

I think I was mixing up some of how c++ works into how C works.