Thread: Copy pointer address to buffer and convert it back

Hi,

I,m quite new to C and I was wondering the following:

I have this large buffer in which I wish to store some data. One of the things I would like to store in this buffer is the address of a pointer instead of the value, like following example:

Code:

char size[7] = "000015";
char* buffer = (char*) malloc(15 * sizeof(char));
sprintf(buffer, "Lots of text...");

int buffer_size = 6 + sizeof(char*);
char* block_buffer = (char*) malloc(buffer_size * sizeof(char));

Memory addresses are 4 bytes on my system, so I would like my block_buffer to contain "000015XXXX" where XXXX is the memory address of buffer.

Any idea how i do this?

And afterwards, when I split the block_buffer back up into size and address, how can i convert that address back to a char* containing the original "Lots of text..." data?

If someone could explain to my if this is possible or not, or what would be the better approach, that would be a great help.

Thanks in advance.

>>I,m quite new to C and I was wondering the following:
Perhaps you could tell us why you need to do this. There probably would be better way.

Well, there is this cobol program which will call my C-routine, this program will supply 1 block of data as a parameter by reference. For the sake of the example this block will contain a size and a memory address (+ some other 'fields') "000015XXXX.....". This memory address points to a giant block of text which the user will be able to edit in my C-program, so lots of reallocs could occur. Afterwards i will need to update the referenced parameter with the new size and new memory address, so the Cobol will be able to read the new text block from memory.

So the flow would be:

1) Cobol allocates memory for some text with length 500 at address 0001.
2) Cobol calls my C-routine with parameter "0005000001" by reference.
3) My C-routine will need to retrieve the text from the "0001" address.
4) User changes text, and fe adds 100 chars, so realloc to length 600 at address 0002.
5) At the end of my routine I need to convert the text pointer back to a char representation of the memory address and update the parameter to "0006000002".
6) Cobol continues with those values.

At the moment I want a test C-routine which replaces the cobol and calls my other C-routine with a valid parameter. This is why I want to know how to do steps 3 and 5.

I hope this is a bit clear, since it is quite a complicated problem, and I'm not sure if this is the right approach...

Even though, thx for your input.

If I understand the idea, you're passing a string back and forth. That string has two values - a length and address.

If so, sprintf/sscanf is the way to go here. Assuming you control both programs the format is up to you so make it easy to parse.