Question

Assume we have these declarations:

int** a;
int b[x][y];

Can I implement a function

foo f(bar c) {}

that lets me

f(a);
f(b);

without needing to overload it?

Answer 1

Sure, just use void* 🙂

And to answer your question, no. A multidimentional array is not the same as a pointer to a pointer. The reason is the indexing scheme. int b [2][2] is a continuous memory block of 4 integers. Indexing into it is equivalent to the following:

b[i][j] == *(b + 2*i + j)

The second dimension is part of the type defintion! The compiler knows that it only needs one dereference due to the memory layout of the array.

Meanwhile, for int** a the indexing is done like this:

a[i][j] == *(*(a+i)+j)