Friday, March 4, 2011

How to work with pointer to pointer to structure in C?

Hi, I want to change member of structure under double pointer. Do you know how?

Example code

typedef struct {
    int member;
} Ttype;

void changeMember(Ttype **foo) {
   //I don`t know how to do it
   //maybe
   *foo->member = 1;
}

Thanks for any help.

From stackoverflow
  • maybe (*foo)->member = 1 (if it's dynamically allocated)

    Jonathan Leffler : No maybe - but dynamic allocation is immaterial.
  • Try

    (*foo)->member = 1;
    

    You need to explicitly use the * first. Otherwise it's an attempt to dereference member.

  • Due to operator precedence, you need to put parentheses around this:

    (*foo)->member = 1;
    
  • Thanks for quick answer. Of course (*foo)->member is correct. I tried something like *(foo->member), (foo.member) and other bad things...

    Thanks a lot.

  • You can use a temp variable to improve readability. For example:

    Ttype *temp = *foo;
    temp->member = 1;
    

    If you have control of this and allowed to use C++, the better way is to use reference. For example:

    void changeMember(Ttype *&foo) {
       foo->member = 1;
    }
    

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