Question

Possible Duplicate:
Stack pointer difference for char pointer and array

To illustrate my question:

int main(void){
    int myary[20];
    int *myaryPtr;
    myaryPtr = myary;

    sizeof(myary); // Will it return 80? Correct?
    sizeof(myaryPtr); // Will it return 4? Correct?
    return 0;
}

First off, is my assumption correct?

And then assuming my assumption is correct, what is the detailed explanation? I understand that my 20 element array is 80 bytes, but isn’t the name myary merely a pointer to the first element of the array? So shouldn’t it also be 4?

Answer 1

Yes, your assumption is correct, assuming an int and a pointer are both 4 bytes long on your machine.

And no, arrays aren’t pointers. The array name sometimes decays into a pointer in certain contexts, but they aren’t the same thing. There is a whole section of the comp.lang.c FAQ dedicated to this common point of confusion.