Question

I have studied C pointers, and am wondering why the compiler is issuing an incompatible pointer types error in the following code:

#include <stdio.h>


const char *months(int n);
int main() {
    char **p = months(2);

    printf("%s", **p);
}

const char *months(int n) {
  const char *m[] = {
        "Invalid month",
        "January",
        "February",
        "March",
        "Aprli"
    };
    return (n == 0 || n > 12) ? m[0] : m[n];
}

I expect printf to display “February” as month, but I get that error
“Incompatible pointer types initializing ‘char **’ with an expression of type ‘const char *'”
during compile process .

If not wrong months function return pointer to “n” month. Next I create a pointer p to point the result of months function.

What is wrong here ?

Answer 1

p needs to match the return type of months, which is const char *. This should work:

const char *p = months(2);
printf("%s", p);  // no need to dereference to *p here