Hello,

How do I convert the following to use pointers instead of subscripts?

short i;
char words [2000];
for (r=0; r < NumRows; r++)
      cout << words[r];

In the assignment we were given we were told to dynamically allocate an array, read an input file of strings, and store each string in the array preceeded by a one-byte field containing the length of that string. Further the assignment says to not leave unused elements after each string.

The only way I can figure out how to do this is to create another temporary array and do a memcpy after properly positioning the pointer and then do the cout from the temporary array.

Sam Stamport

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Sam Stamport

Let me clarify this a bit.

The code I put in my original post works when the array is defined at compile-time, according to my instructor. However, the assignment we were given was to dynamically allocate the array. As I understand it pointers HAVE to be used anytime an array is dynamically allocated.

Since the assignment also says that the dynamically allocated array is not to be treated as a 2D array -- we are to not leave empty elements at the end of each "row" -- to print the array would require that another temporary array be allocated, the input line extraced from the original array using memcpy, then the temporary array printed in a loop.

The original array is defined as "char", but we are to use strlen to place the length of each string in the byte immediately preceeding each string, the contents of the string (including the NULL character at the end), then at the very next element the lenght of the next record, the contents of the record, and so on.

Sam Stamport

To dynamically allocate an array would look something along the lines of this:

char* myString;

// c++ new operator
myStrings = new char[10]; // a string containing 10 elements

// c style calloc call

char* myString;

myString = (char*) calloc(40, sizeof(char)); // returns a pointer to an array 40 elements
                                                                     // wide each element size of a char
you Can re-allocate a block with realloc

myString = (char*)realloc( myString, (_msize(myString) + (10*sizeof(char)))); // new array with 10 more elements all size of a char