Question

I need to track my current location in a data buffer (which will be used as a packet), so I am using two variables, bufferLoc and dataBuffer.

char dataBuffer[8192];
char** bufferLoc;

I am pointing to the starting location of dataBuffer with bufferLoc. But incrementing bufferLoc does not affect its physical address in memory.

bufferLoc = (char**)&dataBuffer;

cout << &bufferLoc << endl;

bufferLoc++;

cout << &bufferLoc << endl;

These two prints will output the same location. Does my error have to do with type casting, with bufferLoc itself, or something completely different?

Thanks for your help.

Answer 1

If your intention is to scan through dataBuffer one byte at a time, then the second variable should be a pointer, not a pointer to a pointer.

char* bufferLoc;

then print it out without the ampersand:

cout << (unsigned int *)bufferLoc << endl;

note that cout will try to print your variable as text unless you cast to an unsigned int*