char *p & char p[]

Preparation

• char *p & char p[]

char *p = "hello_world!"

<=equivalent to=>

char p[] = "hello_world!"

‘p’ means a pointer to character string, located in the stack. However, the real charactors content of "hello_world!" were stored in the RO AREA where it’s not allowed to be overriden.

• char p[20] = “hello_world!”

‘p’ represents that the array name of a charactor array, meawhile, that indicates that the stack address of the first element of a charactor array(&p[0])

p -->  'h'
       'e'
       'l'  
       'l'
       'o'
       '_'
       'w'
       'o'
       'r'
       'l'
       'd'
       '!'
       '\0'

Access Operation

char  str[20]  = "hello_world!";

char *p = str;    ( or char *p = &str[0];)

• Pointer Access
  if we wanna get the content of the designated index position in the charactors array.
  p[index] <=> *(p+index)
  eg: str[1] == p[1] == *(p+1) == ‘e’

• Mindset Within Structure Array

typedef struct _st{
char  *p;
...
struct _st  *next;
}MSDN_ST,  *MSDN_ST_PTR;

MSDN_ST  st[10] ;
MSDN_ST_PTR  pst = &st[0];

The same with above charactor pointer access operation. we could do as following if we wanna get the element of the designated index position in the structure array.

eg: st[2] <=> pst[2] <=> *(pst+2)

st[2].p = "hello_world!";
pst[2].p = "hello_world!";
(*(pst+2)).p = "hello_world!";
(MSDN_ST_PTR )(pst+2)->p = "hello_world!"; // Keep in mind do memory mallocation for pointer `p`  before assignment operation.