How would I fix this incompatible pointer type warning

[ogglock]

Hi I'm trying to pass in argv into a function that checks the arguments and assigns values for the arguments passed it. When I try to pass in argv, i get the following warning

a2.c:80: warning: passing arg 1 of `checkargs' from incompatible pointer type

what does this warning mean?

Here is my code:

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

int checkargs(const char * argv[], int *offset, int *length, int *option, const int argc);

int main(int argc, char * argv[])
{
	int *option, *length, *offset;
	size_t i;
	
	if(argc < 2 || argc > 4)
	{
		printf("USAGE: dump [-bcC] [-nlength] [-soffset] [file]");
		return 0;
	}

	checkargs(argv, offset, length, option, argc);
	printf("Option: %d \nLength: %d\nOffset: %d", option, length, offset);
}

int checkargs(const char* argv[], int *offset, int *length, int *option, const int argc)
{
	size_t i;
	for(i = 0; i < argc; i++)
	{
		if(argv[i][0] == '-')
		{
			if(argv[i][1] == 'b')
			{
				*option = 1;
			}
			
			if(argv[i][1] == 'c')
			{
				*option = 2;
			}
			
			if(argv[i][1] == 'C')
			{
				*option = 3;
			}
		}
		
		if(argv[i][0] == '-')
		{
			if(argv[i][1] == 'n')
			{
				if(sscanf(argv[i],"-n %d ", &length) != 1)
				{
					printf("error getting the length");
					exit(1);
				}
			}
		}

		if(argv[i][0] == '-')
		{
			if(argv[i][1] == 's')
			{
				if(sscanf(argv[i],"-s %d ", &offset) != 1)
				{
					printf("error getting offset");
					exit(2);
				}
			}
		}
	}
	
	return 0;
}

Thanks for any help in advance

[AndrewHunter]

Look at the difference in your declarations for argv:

int checkargs(const char * argv[], int *offset, int *length, int *option, const int argc);

int main(int argc, char * argv[])

Do you see the problem?

[iMalc]

I wouldn't be surprised how many people would not see that as a problem since generally one can pass something non-const into something that takes a const. It simply means that the function promises not to change the argument, even though it is not necessary from the caller's point of view for it to make that promise.

In this case though it gets tricker because once pointers are involved there are more things that can be const or not. In fact I'm a little hazy on this myself, but I think the problem comes from your definition saying that it might alter the pointers in that array, though it promises to not change the data that those pointers pointed to. This actually is a bit of a hollow promise and therein lies the problem.

Interstingly, the following is actually okay:

int checkargs(const char * const argv[], int *offset, int *length, int *option, const int argc);

i.e. Adding another const can fix it rather than removing a const.
Aint C++ grand!