Question

Is it possible to increment the array passed to a function?

I have a single dimensional array a[4] = {10,20,30,40}, I want to call a function and increment the array to point to 3rd element and print it from main().

For ex:

int main()
{
  int a[4] = {10,20,30,40};
  cout << *a; // 10
  increment(); // function call
  cout << *a; // 40
}

How can we accomplish this?If array is passed as a pointer, only the modification to the value stored in array get reflected. What is the prototype of the function if we have to increment the array in function?

Answer 1

Alternative to as suggested is:

#include <iostream>

void foo(int *&p) // <-- take pointer by reference...
{
  ++p;
  ++p;
}

int main(void)
{
  int a[] = {1,2,3,4};

  int*p = a;

  std::cout << *p << std::endl;

  foo(p);

  std::cout << *p << std::endl;

}

Use a second pointer to access the original array and modify that in the function…

Further alternative is to use either std::vector<int>, std::array<int, 4> and then pass an iterator to the function (and get it to return an iterator)…