Thread: Arrays of Pointers, how do they work?

But each string can be thought of as an array of characters. So the size of each individual character array is determined by the string value assigned to it, no?

Originally Posted by dwks

Sort of. It's best not to think of it as an array, because "Hearts" takes up less space than "Diamonds", which goes against how arrays work.

You basically have two things to think about:

• An array of four pointers, which point to strings.
• Four read-only strings stored elsewhere, which the pointers point to.

These strings each take up exactly as much space as they need.

Sorry if I'm just re-stating what everyone else has already said.

Great explanation. Helped me as well!

Originally Posted by dwks

Sort of. It's best not to think of it as an array, because "Hearts" takes up less space than "Diamonds", which goes against how arrays work.
You basically have two things to think about:

• An array of four pointers, which point to strings.
• Four read-only strings stored elsewhere, which the pointers point to.

These strings each take up exactly as much space as they need.
Sorry if I'm just re-stating what everyone else has already said.

No, that's fine. I think you worded it best right there. And I would like to clarify again for simplicity reasons that those strings are not stored in the pointers, just the address where the string is stored.