How to retrieve an array from a pointer in c++ - c++

I'm having problems with a program that only accepts arrays. I'm having plenty of pointers to different arrays, but using *p seems to only give me the first element of the array. I want to return all the elements of the array. I know the length of the array, if that helps.
#include <typeinfo>
#include <iostream>
int i[10];
int* k=i;
cout<<typeid(i).name()<<'\n';
cout<<typeid(*k).name()<<'\n';
results in 'int [10]' and 'int' respectively. I want some way of returning k as 'int [10]'.

Your k is a pointer to int. It points to the first element of the array. If you want a pointer to the whole array then you need to declare it as such.
#include <typeinfo>
#include <iostream>
int main() {
int i[10];
int* k=i;
int(*p)[10] = &i;
std::cout<<typeid(i).name()<<'\n';
std::cout<<typeid(*k).name()<<'\n';
std::cout<<typeid(*p).name()<<'\n';
}
Output:
A10_i
i
A10_i
However, as others have said, std::array is much less confusing to work with. It can do (almost) anything a c-array can do without its quirks.
Certainly there is a solution to your actual problem that does not require to get the array from a pointer to a single integer.

Example to show you how much more convenient C++ array/vector is then "C" style arrays with pointers :
#include <vector>
#include <iostream>
// with std::vector you can return arrays
// without having to think about pointers and/or new
// and your called cannot forget to call delete
std::vector<int> make_array()
{
std::vector<int> values{ 1,2,3,4,5,6 };
return values;
}
// pass by reference if you want to modify values in a function
void add_value(std::vector<int>& values, int value)
{
values.push_back(value);
}
// pass by const refence if you only need to use the values
// and the array content should not be modified.
void print(const std::vector<int>& values)
{
// use range based for loops if you can they will not go out of bounds.
for (const int value : values)
{
std::cout << value << " ";
}
}
int main()
{
auto values = make_array();
add_value(values, 1);
print(values);
std::cout << "\n";
std::cout << values.size(); // and a vector keeps track of its own size.
return 0;
}

Related

C++ Create array with dynamic name

I need a create array in c++ but I need array always with variables name
int Magic(string name_array,int n)
{
string Name = "Something";
Name.append(name_array);
double * Name = new double[n];
}
int main()
{
Magic("a.txt",10);
}
And I have this error:
operator' : 'identifier1' differs in levels of indirection from 'identifier2'
I know it's not a python but maybe a map help me? How I can make this?
If you want to be able to access different arrays by string names, consider using a std::map<std::string, std::vector<double>>. This maps strings to C++'s better, more dynamic answer to arrays. In this case your code would be something like:
#include <iostream>
#include <map>
#include <vector>
void AddVector(std::map<std::string, std::vector<double>> &io_map,
const std::string& i_name,
const std::size_t i_size)
{
io_map[i_name].resize(i_size);
}
int main()
{
std::map<std::string, std::vector<double>> vector_map;
AddVector(vector_map, "Vector1", 3);
AddVector(vector_map, "Vector2", 10);
std::cout << "Vector with string key Vector1 has size: " << vector_map["Vector1"].size() << std::endl;
return 0;
}
In this code I've tried to be as close to the code you've given - resizing the vectors to the size you would have created the array in your "Magic" function. However, vectors can dynamically resize, so you may not even need to create/resize them in your code depending on your use case.

Pointers to an Array and Vector object

How do pointers work for an array and a vector object
For array_1
#include <iostream>
#include <array>
using namespace std;
int main(){
int a[3][4]={0,1,3,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11};
//int (*pi)[4]=a;
for( auto *pi=a; pi!=a+3; ++pi ){
for( auto p=*pi; p!=*pi + 4; ++p){
cout << *p << "\n";
}
}
}
For array_2
#include <iostream>
#include <array>
using namespace std;
int main(){
int a[3][4]={0,1,3,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11};
//int (*pi)[4]=a;
for( auto pi=a; pi!=a+3; ++pi ){
for( auto p=*pi; p!=*pi + 4; ++p){
cout << *p << "\n";
}
}
}
For vector_1
#include <iostream>
#include <vector>
using namespace std;
int main(){
vector<int> a{0,1,3,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11};
for(auto i=a.begin(); i!=a.end(); ++i ){
// we can also use begin(a) and end(a)
cout << *i << "\n";
}
}
For vector_2
#include <iostream>
#include <vector>
using namespace std;
int main(){
vector<int> a{0,1,3,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11};
for(auto *i=a.begin(); i!=a.end(); ++i ){
// we can also use begin(a) and end(a)
cout << *i << "\n";
}
}
Both codes (for array_1 and for array_2) give the same output i.e (0-11)
you can see that there is a difference in the first for loop of both pieces of code.
In the For vector_1 ,as far as I understood, I think, I am creating a pointer i to the beginning of the vector and then dereferencing it to fetch the value of that corresponding position. Now my doubt is, how come in the For array_1 and For array_2 when I use the *pi in the 2nd for loop, instead of getting dereferenced(like in the case of vector), it is fetching me the iterative values?
And why does the For vector_2 not work the same way as For vector_1?
And what is the return type of the size() and begin()/end() function for vector?
Cause when I use for(decltype(a.size()) i=0; i!=end(); ++i), it is giving me a type conversion error.
The code for array_1, for array_2 and for vector_1 gives the same output(0-10). It is the for vector_2 that is giving an error.
Thanks.
In case of vector_1 you are not creating a pointer, but an iterator - in most basic use cases, like printing vector results, iterator works and is used like a pointer, but it is not the same and shouldn't be handled the same way you handle a pointer. In case of vector_2 you do something nasty since this is the job of the auto keyword to determine whether the variable is to be a pointer or not.
The last example causes an error, because you are trying to create a pointer to iterator, and the type returned by the begin() function is an iterator (a value), not the address of the iterator object.
If you want to know the return types of functions like size(), begin(), etc. you can always refer to one of the several large C++ reference websites, for example:
www.cplusplus.com
www.cppreference.com

Modifying elements of an array through a function

I'm learning about pointers and I can't get this code to work. Here's what I have so far:
void incrementArray(int* a[]) {
for(auto& x : a) {
++x;
}
}
int _tmain(int argc, _TCHAR* argv[])
{
int array[] = {0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9};
for(auto x : array) {
cout << x << '\n';
}
incrementArray(&array);
for(auto x : array) {
cout << x << '\n';
}
}
I'm getting the following error:
'incrementArray' : cannot convert parameter 1 from 'int (*)[10]' to
'int *[]'
What can I do to fix my code?
C-style arrays have funny syntax. To pass the array to a function, use int a[] This does not copy the array and changes to the array inside the function will modify the external array. You only need to call incrementArray(array); no & needed
You could try using std::array class which follows more normal syntax.
you have a pointer as a parameter (a reference to an array), but you wish to modify the actual thing it's pointing to, so you gotta change *a, not a.
You could use an array, vector, list, etc object that would have methods already associated to them that do most of the manipulation you could want
What you are trying to do will not work since the signature of a function taking int a[] as an argument does not contain the necessary length information needed to write a for-each loop (i.e. to instantiate the begin() and end() templates needed to use the for-each syntax). GCC's warning says this fairly clearly:
Error:(14, 19) cannot build range expression with array function parameter 'a' since
parameter with array type 'int *[]' is treated as pointer type 'int **'
I thought this might be do-able with a template, but . . .
EDIT:
It can be done with templates, just took me a moment to wrap my head around the syntax. Here is your example in working condition:
template <size_t N>
void incArray(int (&a)[N]) {
for(auto& x : a) {
++x;
}
}
int main(int argc, const char * argv[])
{
int array[] = {0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9};
for (auto x : array) {
cout << x << " ";
}
cout << endl;
incArray(array);
for (auto x : array) {
cout << x << " ";
}
cout << endl;
return 0;
}
There are a couple approaches you could take to increment the elements of an array, all of which require knowing where to start and where to end. The simple way of doing what you want is to just pass the start and end address pointers, but you could also pass a start address with some offset. Since you are using a C-Style array, your int element has and address int*, so your std::begin(array) is an int* to the first element while std::end(array) points to the address of the location after your last allocated element. In your program, the std::end() address points to the memory location after your 10th allocated element. If you had an array with a size allocation (int other_arr[40]), std::end() will point to the first address after the allocation (std::end(other_arr) would be std::begin(other_arr)+41). C++ has recently introduced non-member std::begin() and std::end() in the <iterator> library, which returns a pointer to the respective element locations in your C-Array.
#include <algorithm> // std::copy
#include <iostream> // std::cout
#include <iterator> // std::begin
void increment_elements(int* begin, const int* end) {
while (begin != end) {
++(*begin);
++begin;
}
}
// An increment functor for std::transform
int increase_element(int i) {
return ++i;
}
int main() {
int array[] = { 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 };
for (const int x : array) {
std::cout << x << ' ';
}
std::cout << '\n';
increment_elements(std::begin(array), std::end(array));
// Another way to write your print statement above
std::copy(std::begin(array),
std::end(array),
std::ostream_iterator<int>(std::cout, " "));
std::cout << '\n';
// Transform array elements through increase_element()
// and print result to cout.
std::transform(std::begin(array),
std::end(array),
std::ostream_iterator<int>(std::cout, " "),
increase_element);
std::cout << '\n';
}
The generalized version of the increment_elements() function can be found in the <algorithm> library as the function std::transform() documented here.
Since you are learning now, here are some habits that you can start to utilize:
Do not use using namespace std; at the global level. By pulling everything in the standard library into the global namespace, you "pollute" it with functionality that can be called if a function call for it exists, since it doesn't require a std:: prefix qualification. Say you were to write a function that calculated the euclidean distance between two (x,y) points, double distance(Point* p1, Point* p2). You decide to use any of the STL containers, such as <vector>. The containers utilize the <iterator> library, which has its own std::distance(T*, T*) function to calculate the distance between two addresses in memory. By bringing std into the global namespace by using namespace std;, you now have 2 functions with the same signature in the same namespace, that do 2 completely different things. This is very bad yet easily avoidable. This general guideline is probably unnecessary for small projects, but I still recommend you just don't ever do it for any project. Ever.
const or const T& your read only operations. When doing operations where you are pulling data for reading and you don't want to modify the data, initialize using const or const T&. const by itself is sufficient for primitive datatypes (int, float, double, char), but non-primitives will require const T& (T is the type). Values that are of type const T& (called const referenced) are read-only (const) and directly accessed (&).

My code prints out the address instead of the array value?

What is wrong with my code? I want to print out the array, but when I try to do so it seems to print out an address instead.
#include <iostream>
#include <ctime>
#include <stdlib.h>
using namespace std;
int main ()
{
srand(time(NULL));
int array[9]= {0};
for (int i=0;i<=8;i++)
{
array[i]= (rand()%101);
}
cout<< array;
system ("PAUSE");
return 0;
}
You can't just cout an array. Arrays are not cout-able. Whenever you successfully cout something of type T, it means that there's a dedicated overloaded << operator designed specifically to cout values of type T. And there's no dedicated << operator for cout-ing arrays (aside from strings). For this reason the compiler chooses the closest match for the given argument type: a << operator for pointers. Since arrays are convertible to pointers, that << is applicable here.
If you want to cout the values of all elements of your array, you'll have to either cout them manually, one by one, or use some standard algorithm that can do it for you. For example
std::copy(array, array + 9, std::ostream_iterator<int>(std::cout, " "));
You'll need to do a loop to output each array element on its own.
The problem is that C++ doesn't always know the size of the array, so it can't default to outputting the whole thing as you would expect.
You need to iterate over the array and print each element like how you assigned value at each index. Since array decays to a pointer to the first element in the sequence, you are getting the address.
std::cout doesn't have an overload for int array[9], so this decays to a pointer (int*) and this is what you'll see displayed (something like 0x7fffe47142d0).
To print the ints in the array individually, you will need to use a loop construct (like the for- loop you are using for populating the array) and send each of the ints to std::cout in turn, perhaps with some whitespace to format them.
Once you get the hang of C++ and its standard library, you may want to investigate how to do this with std::copy(), but I suspect this is a bit advanced for your homework.
C++ decays array type to a pointer type when the value is passed as argument to a function. C++11 has std::array (and TR1 specifies std::tr1::array) which retains the size of the array. Here is your example modified to use std::array:
#include <array>
#include <iostream>
#include <ctime>
#include <stdlib.h>
template<typename T, std::size_t N>
std::ostream& operator<< (std::ostream& ostm, const std::array<T, N>& a)
{
for (auto const& x : a)
ostm << x << ' ';
return ostm;
}
int main ()
{
srand(time(NULL));
std::array<int, 9> array;
for (auto& x : array)
x = rand() % 101;
std::cout<< array << std::endl;
}

Converting a vector to an array - Is there a 'standard' way to do this?

I know you can just do: &theVector[0], but is this standard? Is this behavior always guaranteed?
If not, is there a better, less 'hackish' way to do this?
Yes, that behavior is guaranteed. Although I can't quote it, the standard guarantees that vector elements are stored consecutively in memory to allow this.
There is one exception though:
It will not work for vector<bool> because of a template specialization.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequence_container_%28C%2B%2B%29#Specialization_for_bool
This specialization attempts to save memory by packing bools together in a bit-field. However, it breaks some semantics and as such, &theVector[0] on a vector<bool> will not work.
In any case, vector<bool> is widely considered to be a mistake so the alternative is to use std::deque<bool> instead.
C++11 provides the data() method on std::vector which returns a T*. This allows you to do:
#include <iostream>
#include <vector>
int main()
{
std::vector<int> vector = {1,2,3,4,5};
int* array = vector.data();
std::cout << array[4] << std::endl; //Prints '5'
}
However, doing this (or any of the methods mentioned above) can be dangerous as the pointer could become invalid if the vector is resized. This can be shown with:
#include <iostream>
#include <vector>
int main()
{
std::vector<int> vector = {1,2,3,4,5};
int* array = vector.data();
vector.resize(100); //This will reserve more memory and move the internal array
//This _may_ end up taking the place of the old array
std::vector<int> other = {6,7,8,9,10};
std::cout << array[4] << std::endl; //_May_ now print '10'
}
This could could crash or do just about anything so be careful using this.
We can do this using data() method. C++11 provides this method.
It returns a pointer to the first element in the vector. vector Even if it is empty, we can call this function itself without problems
vector<int>v;
int *arr = v.data();
A less 'hackish' way? Well you could simply copy :
#include <iostream>
#include <vector>
using namespace std;
int main()
{
vector<int> vect0r;
int array[100];
//Fill vector
for(int i = 0; i < 10 ; i++) vect0r.push_back( i ) ;
//Copy vector to array[ ]
for( i = 0; i < vect0r.size(); i++) array[i] = vect0r[i];
//Dispay array[ ]
for( i = 0; i < vect0r.size(); i++) cout<< array[i] <<" \n";
cout<<" \n";
return 0;
}
More here : How to convert vector to array in C++