passing char where array of chars required

[larry]

What if function requires a pointer to first item in char array (like "void function(char* text)") and I need to pass one character - single variable of type char. Do I always have to create an array, set its first character to the character from the variable and create a pointer to it, or is there any other, smarter, way to do this?

[V]

Well, I'm assuming you're using this because you want to pass a character to a text function.

The answer is yes, you must pass an array. The reason is, the text functions take the address of the first character -- so they don't know when a string exds, except by the addition of the extra character -- the NUL character -- at the end of the string. So every string with one "real" character is really 2 chars long.

It's not that hard to do what you want, you can just do something like this (assume theChar is already initialized to the char you want):

char buff[2];
sprintf((char *) &buff,"%c",theChar);
function((char *) &buff);

Of course, this is exactly equivalent to:

char buff[2];
buff[0] = theChar;
buff[1] = 0;
function((char *) &buff);

You can pass the address of a single character SOMETIMES, but *only* if:

1) One of the parameters specifies the number of characters to operate on.
2) You know that the byte of memory immediately following your character is zeroed.

Case 1) happens if you use commands that work on parts of a string, and case 2) happens in a few ways, but the easiest is if your char is part of a struct or object -- then you know what variable immediately follows it in memory, and if you know this is zero, you can use it.

Even in these cases, however, you may simply want to allocate the buffer and do the above -- it's fastest and safest.

[larry]

thankx

[Salem]

> void function(char* text)
If you're passing literal characters, and you wanted to do something like
  function( 'a' ); // single quotes

What you would need to write is this
  function( "a" ); // double quotes

[larry]

I know this, but the problem is that I don't know the character, I'm getting it from user. This takes me to solution! I'd create string variable for the user input and put it in it. So there's no need of extra variable for function "void function(char* text)". Nice. Thanx again.