[NTLUG:Discuss] OT C question

[Johnny Cybermyth]

Ah ha!  Patrick, you have shed light on the matter clearly and 
completely!  I would be very glad to buy you lunch!

I kept insisting the myarray WAS a pointer to a character and had all 
the rights and privileges therein, but I didn't consider the linker vs 
compiler perspectives.  I now completely see why adding the & operator 
in my function parameter list worked when I was using the mismatched 
referencing.

A very heartfelt thanks to you!  I hope others found this as insightful 
as I did.

Thank you very much to everyone else who spent some time out of their 
lives thinking about this and made some good comments as well.

--Johnny

Patrick R. Michaud wrote:
> 
> 
> Aha, this is indeed the problem.  Since file1.c defines myarray
> as being an array of characters, your extern statement needs to match.
> 
> "But char* is the same as char[]," I hear people say.  Actually,
> in this case it's not.
> 
> The statement 
> 
>    unsigned char myarray[5];
> 
> allocates five bytes and sets "myarray" as a constant symbol
> that points to the first byte of the array.  Most notably,
> "myarray" is -not- a pointer as it would be if this had been
> an unsigned char* definition.  Perhaps a contrasting example
> will help: