Question

I have declared a struct, and I try to pass an array of those structs (as well as a double array of doubles, and an integer) into a function. I get an "array type has incomplete element type" message from gcc when I compile it. What have I gotten wrong in how I pass the struct to the function?

typedef struct graph_node {
  int X;
  int Y;
  int active;
} g_node;

void print_graph(g_node graph_node[], double weight[][], int nodes);

I have also tried struct g_node graph_node[], but I get the same thing.

Answer 1

It’s the array that’s causing trouble in:

void print_graph(g_node graph_node[], double weight[][], int nodes);

The second and subsequent dimensions must be given:

void print_graph(g_node graph_node[], double weight[][32], int nodes);

Or you can just give a pointer to pointer:

void print_graph(g_node graph_node[], double **weight, int nodes);

However, although they look similar, those are very different internally.

If you’re using C99, you can use variably-qualified arrays. Quoting an example from the C99 standard (section §6.7.5.2 Array Declarators):

void fvla(int m, int C[m][m]); // valid: VLA with prototype scope

void fvla(int m, int C[m][m])  // valid: adjusted to auto pointer to VLA
{
    typedef int VLA[m][m];     // valid: block scope typedef VLA
    struct tag {
        int (*y)[n];           // invalid: y not ordinary identifier
        int z[n];              // invalid: z not ordinary identifier
    };
    int D[m];                  // valid: auto VLA
    static int E[m];           // invalid: static block scope VLA
    extern int F[m];           // invalid: F has linkage and is VLA
    int (*s)[m];               // valid: auto pointer to VLA
    extern int (*r)[m];        // invalid: r has linkage and points to VLA
    static int (*q)[m] = &B;   // valid: q is a static block pointer to VLA
}

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Question in comments

[…] In my main(), the variable I am trying to pass into the function is a double array[][], so how would I pass that into the function? Passing array[0][0] into it gives me incompatible argument type, as does &array and &array[0][0].

In your main(), the variable should be:

double array[10][20];

or something faintly similar; maybe

double array[][20] = { { 1.0, 0.0, ... }, ... };

You should be able to pass that with code like this:

typedef struct graph_node
{
    int X;
    int Y;
    int active;
} g_node;

void print_graph(g_node graph_node[], double weight[][20], int nodes);

int main(void)
{
    g_node g[10];
    double array[10][20];
    int n = 10;

    print_graph(g, array, n);
    return 0;
}

That compiles (to object code) cleanly with GCC 4.2 (i686-apple-darwin11-llvm-gcc-4.2 (GCC) 4.2.1 (Based on Apple Inc. build 5658) (LLVM build 2336.9.00)) and also with GCC 4.7.0 on Mac OS X 10.7.3 using the command line:

/usr/bin/gcc -O3 -g -std=c99 -Wall -Wextra -c zzz.c