Question

I’m having trouble understanding the following code:

    const char *suit[4] = {"Hearts", "Diamonds", "Clubs", "Spades"}

I don’t understand what is stored in the array suit, are they pointers? And if so, where are the strings stored?

Also, is the pointer constant, or the array constant?

I would appreciate a full detailed explanation of this code, and what is going on in memory!

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

We learn a lot by using cdecl.org. This is what it tells us about suit:

declare suit as array 4 of pointer to const char

So:

• the array contains 4 pointers.
• each pointer points at a char (in this case, the first character of each string).
• the pointers are not const, and neither is the array.

The strings are literals; where they are stored is implementation-specific.

In ASCII art:

              "Clubs"
               ^
               |  "Spades"
               |   ^
               |   |
     +---+---+---+---+
suit |   |   |   |   |
     +---+---+---+---+
       |   |
       |   v
       |  "Diamonds"
       v
      "Hearts"

Note that suit itself is not a pointer; it’s the name of the array.