Please explain this behaviour related to pointer

[sathishc58]

Hi All,

Here is the code which generates Segmentation Fault. Can anyone explain why the third printf fails and the first printf works?

main() 
{ 
   char ch[7]={"Hello"}; 
   char *p; 
   p=ch; 
   printf("Character is %c\n", *p); 
   printf("Character is %s\n", p); 
   printf("Character is %s\n", *p); 
} 

Output:

Character is H
Character is Hello
Segmentation Fault(coredump)

But Why *p could not fetch the entire string when I say %s in the third printf statement? Why same *p works for first printf?

Please explain...

Thanks & Regards
Sathish Kumar

[Ganon11]

When you use the %s output modifier, I assume printf expects a char* (as that would point to a series of characters, or a string). But you passed it *p, which is a character. A character is not a string, and so the printf() statement fails.

Also, why don't you have a terminating \0 character at the end of ch? I'm surprised your second printf() statement works.

[Banfa]

Also, why don't you have a terminating \0 character at the end of ch? I'm surprised your second printf() statement works.

Ganon you banana, have you got so into C++ you have forgotten C string syntax? "Hello" implicitly includes the '\0' character at the end of it and since the array it is being assigned to is long enough for the 6 characters in that string (it is 7 characters long) it wont be a problem.

[Ganon11]

Ganon you banana, have you got so into C++ you have forgotten C string syntax? "Hello" implicitly includes the '\0' character at the end of it and since the array it is being assigned to is long enough for the 6 characters in that string (it is 7 characters long) it wont be a problem.

Impossible! I can't forget something I never learned!

(never learned C except from TSDN :D)