Thread: error: request for member ‘age’ in something not a structure or union

Code:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>


struct Employee{
	int a;
	char name[32];
	int age;
};

main(int argc, char *argv[]){
	struct Employee **buf;
	FILE *infile;
	int i, size;

		size = atoi(argv[1]);
		buf = (struct Employee **)malloc(size*sizeof(struct Employee *));
		for(i=0; i<size; i++){
			buf[i] = (struct Employee *)malloc(32*sizeof(struct Employee));
		}

		buf[2].age = 4;
		
	return 0;	
}

where is the error? i can' t find it...can somebody help me...

buf is a pointer to pointer to struct. Thus buf[2] is a pointer to a struct. The structure member operator (the dot) only works on structs, not pointers to structs. You want the structure pointer operator (->), which works on pointers to struct: buf[2]->age = 4;

This sort of access doesn't quite make sense given that you've allocated 32 structs for each element of your array, though. I mean, it's not wrong, per se, but semantically it'd make more sense to do something like:

Code:

buf[0][0].age = 4; /* or */
buf[size - 1][15].age = 4;
/* etc */

since what you effectively have is an array of arrays (aka a 2d array). buf[2]->age is the same thing as buf[2][0].age, but the latter makes more sense given how you've set things up.