sizeof behaviour!!

[lawina]

I have this following program:

	        
char a[] = "VC";
char *b = "VC";
printf("\n %d %d",sizeof(a),sizeof(b));

Which gives me the 'sizeof' output 3 and 4 for a and b respectively
3 bytes for 'a' is understandable because we have 'V', 'C' and '\0'.

Whereas, it '4' bytes for b.
Now, where does the extra one byte come in for b?

Thanks.

[ZuK]

sizeof(b) returns the size of a pointer ( 4 on your system ).
Kurt

[lawina]

But both the pointer and the array hold the same content.
Shouldn't they report the same size?

[Salem]

Pointers point.

There is the size of the pointer (usually fixed for any given machine, it looks like 4 on your machine).
There is the size of what it points to (which could be huge, say megabytes, but in this case is just 3 bytes).

sizeof() only ever works on the object itself. You can't use sizeof to tell you how much data a pointer is pointing at.