Question

I am trying to loop an array of integers using pointer, but I get a strange values..

int nums[1] = { 1 };
int *p = nums;
while(*p != NULL) {
    cout << " LOOPING, p is " << *p << endl;
    p++;
}

When I am running, I am getting the next output:

 LOOPING, p is 1
 LOOPING, p is -858993460
 LOOPING, p is 4454504
 LOOPING, p is 3032019

Why I am get those strange values? I should see only “1”, because I am looping until I get NULL pointer, and on each loop I move the next pointer.

Answer 1

while(*p != NULL) {

The comparison is wrong for 2 reasons:

• *p is an integer, not a pointer like NULL implies
• the array isn’t 0 terminated, so even if NULL is treated like a fancy 0, it won’t work

You could try:

int nums[] = {1, 0};
while(*p)