I need to allocate memory dynamically for an array of pointers.
Let us assume,
char *names[50];
char *element;
I used the following code to allocate memory dynamically which is producing error.
names=malloc(sizeof(char *));
Afterwards, i need to assign another character pointer to this one, say
names=element;
I am getting error as ": warning: assignment from incompatible pointer type".
How can i resolve this?
names=malloc(sizeof(char *));
Will allocate either 4 or 8 bytes (depending on your system). This doesn't make sense since your array was already sized at 50 entries in the declaration...
names=element;
This is not how arrays are used in C. You have declared that there are 50 elements in "names" and each one is allocated as a different pointer to an array of characters. You need to decide which element in the array you want to assign. For eaxample:
char *test1 = "test string 1";
char *test2 = "test string 2";
names[0] = test1; // Assign pointer to string 1 to first element of array
names[1] = test2; // Assign pointer to string 2 to second element of array
If you want to dynamically allocate an array of N char *pointers, then you would use:
char **names;
names = malloc(N * sizeof p[0]);
To assign the char * value element to the first element in the array, you would then use:
names[0] = element;
You may want to check this tutorial out: http://dystopiancode.blogspot.com/2011/10/dynamic-multidimensional-arrays-in-c.html It says how to allocate dynamic memory for arrays,matrices,cubes and hypercube and also how you can free it.
