Question

I believe I understand how normal variables and pointers are represented in memory if you are using C.

For example, it’s easy to understand that a pointer Ptr will have an address, and its value will be a different address, which is the space in memory it’s pointing to. The following code:

int main(){
    int x = 10;
    int *Ptr;
    Ptr = &x;
return 0;
}

Would have the following representation in memory:

+---------------------+-------------+---------+
| Variable Name       | Address     | Value   | 
+---------------------+-------------+---------+
| x                   | 3342        | 10      |
+---------------------+-------------+---------+
| Ptr                 | 5466        | 3342    |
+---------------------+-------------+---------+

However I find it difficult to understand how arrays are represented in memory. For example the code:

int main(){
    int x[5];
        x[0]=12;
        x[1]=13;
        x[2]=14;

    printf("%p\n",(void*)x);
    printf("%p\n",(void*)&x);

return 0;
}

outputs the same address twice (for the sake of simplicity 10568). Meaning that x==&x. Yet *x (or x[0] in array notation) is equal to 12, *(x+1) (or x[1] in array notation) is equal to 13 and so on. How can this be represented? One way could be this:

+---------------------+-------------+----------+----------------------+
| Variable Name       | Address     | Value    | Value IF array       |
+---------------------+-------------+----------+----------------------+
| x                   | 10568       | 10568    | 12                   |
+---------------------+-------------+----------+----------------------+
|                     | 10572       |          | 13                   | 
+---------------------+-------------+----------+----------------------+
|                     | 10576       |          | 14                   | 
+---------------------+-------------+----------+----------------------+
|                     | 10580       |          | trash                | 
+---------------------+-------------+----------+----------------------+
|                     | 10584       |          | trash                | 
+---------------------+-------------+----------+----------------------+

Is this close to what happens, or completely off?

Answer 1

An array is a block of contiguous objects with no spaces in between. This means that x in your second example is represented in memory as:

+---------------------+-------------+---------+
| Variable Name       | Address     | Value   | 
+---------------------+-------------+---------+
| x                   | 10568       | 12      |
|                     |             +---------+
|                     |             | 13      |
|                     |             +---------+
|                     |             | 14      |
|                     |             +---------+
|                     |             | ??      |
|                     |             +---------+
|                     |             | ??      |
+---------------------+-------------+---------+

That is, x is five ints big, and has a single address.

The weird part about arrays isn’t in how they’re stored – it’s how they’re evaluated in expressions. If you use an array name somewhere that it isn’t the subject of the unary & or sizeof operators, it evaluates to the address of its first member.

That is, if you just write x, you will get a value 10568 with type int *.

If, on the other hand you write &x, then the special rule doesn’t apply – so the & operator works like it normally does, which means that it fetches the address of the array. In the example, this will be a value 10568 with type int (*)[5].

The reason that x == &x is that the address of the first member of an array is necessarily equal to the address of the array itself, since an array starts with its first member.