[SOLVED] initializing a multidimensional array of strings

To quote Bjarne Stroustrup, "The better one knows C, the harder it seems to avoid writing C++ in C style." Definitions in the OpenGL Programming Guide (the Red Book) C: God's programming language. C++: The programming language of an alien deity. My own spin is that for a project written by a single programmer, C is easier. For a project written by multiple programmers in parallel, C++ is almost mandatory. However, that is a topic for a different thread. Relevant to this thread, does .size return something other than 8? If not, then why not?

Originally Posted by rtmistler I don't know the exact code syntax, but C++ is eminently better qualified to manage lists and arrays; similarly is python. For instance, just me tossing it out having not checked, you have a list declared, you also have methods for it such as .size() or .length(), I believe it would be .size() where that will give you an integer representation of the size of the list. Further, the greater part of C++ is that things like String types or something similar; classes actually; allow you to declare something as a String class or list of String classes and not worry about pre-declaring the dimensions. So you might want to keep what you do have, but look a bit at some of the available C++ classes you could use. And to note further, gcc on a general Linux system should be able to deal with C++ code. Not sure if you're working on that type of platform, but just pointing that detail out.

If I ask for sizeof(subtopic_3), it returns 16. If I ask for (sizeof(subtopic_3) / sizeof(char *)), I get the number of elements in the array.
Since sizeof(subtopic[i]) returns 8 for all [i], apparently it does not recognize that subtopic[i] is an array.

Originally Posted by ntubski sizeof returns size in bytes, your size[] array is counting the number of elements. subtopic is an array of pointers, all pointers are 8 bytes (or 4 bytes on a 32 bit system).

Originally Posted by piobair apparently it does not recognize that subtopic[i] is an array.

That's because subtopic[i] is not an array. Consider that subtopic_0 is not the same size as subtopic_1, they have different size (and therefore different types). An array's elements must be of the same type (and therefore same size). To get around this restriction you made subtopic into an array of pointers; it doesn't contain arrays.

The distinction between arrays and pointers in C is confusing, the C FAQ's Arrays and Pointers section and this other LQ thread about it may be useful reads.