Return to Revisions

What is the difference between char word[length] and char *word = malloc(sizeof(char) * LENGTH)??

A char * is a pointer to a char (or a sequence of chars -- aka a string) while a char[] is an array of chars. They're both interchangeably used, but here are some main differences.

1. If you use a char *, as a member of a struct, you have to allocate memory for it separately using malloc() while if you used a char[], all you need to do is to specify the size of that array. So for example, given these 2 structs,

   typedef struct s1
   {
       char *str;
   }
   s1;
   
   // some code
   s1 *ptr1 = malloc(sizeof(s1)); // allocate memory for an s1
   
   // if we wanna use ptr1->str, we have to allocate memory separately for it
   ptr1->str = malloc(sizeof(LENGTH)); // allocate memory for str
   
   // some code
   

   On the other hand,

   typedef struct s2
   {
       char arr[LENGTH];
   }
   s2;
   
   // some code
   s2 *ptr2 = malloc(sizeof(s2)); // allocate memory for an s2
   
   // you can now initialize ptr2->arr directly here without mallocing memory for it
   

2. Since you're allocating memory for char * variables separately, you also need to free them separately while a char[] is automatically freed when you call free() on a pointer to this specific struct. For example,

   // free data
   free(ptr1->str); // we have to free ptr->str first
   free(ptr1); // then free ptr itself
   

   On the other hand,

   // free data
   free(ptr2); // no need to free ptr2->arr
   

3. One last thing is that you won't be able to initialize a char[] with a string literal if you've declared it separately as it's the case here. You have to initialize it character by character while a char * can be initialized with a string literal anytime even if you didn't allocate memory for it and of course you won't need to free it separately in this case since you didn't malloc memory for it at the first place. So for example,

   ptr1->str = "hello"; // initialize ptr->str
   

   On the other hand,

   // initialize ptr2->arr
   ptr2->arr[0] = 'h';
   ptr2->arr[1] = 'e';
   ptr2->arr[2] = 'l';
   ptr2->arr[3] = 'l';
   ptr2->arr[4] = 'o';
   ptr2->arr[5] = '\0';
   

It's worth mentioning that initializing a char * with a string literal won't let you edit any of the its characters afterwards.

In char * word, what is the meaning of &word,word and *word?

In this situation, word is a pointer to a char (or a sequence of chars). It contains the address of the block of memory it points to. &word is the address of that pointer. It returns the address of word. *word dereferences the address that word contains which gives us the first character in that block (since the address of the first character is the same as the address of the whole block). This [answer][1] has a good visual representation to this.

What is the meaning of NULL in pointer, does it mean word points to memory but memory have nothing OR word doesn't point to memory at all in case word has NULL?

NULL is a special value. It represents a memory address. It's actually equal to 0x0 and that's the zeroth location in memory. And it's a special location that you can't read/write data from and to it. Usually we set pointer values to NULL when we want them to point to nothing.

If there is function that receive something as pointer, How do i pass an argument to it? For example i want to send char * word as parameter, How do i do it?

Given this simple program,

#include <stdio.h>

// prototypes
unsigned int getLength(char *str);

int main(void)
{
    char *str = "hello"; // create a string
    unsigned int l = getLength(str); // pass str to a function
    printf("Length: %u\n", l); // print the length
}

unsigned int getLength(char *str) // accepts a char *
{
    // calculate the length of str
    unsigned int length = 0;
    
    // while the current character is not the null terminator
    while (str[length] != '\0')
    {
        length++; // increase the length by 1
    }

    return length;
}

Hope that helps! [1]: https://stackoverflow.com/a/24468853/1797347