can sizeof( <array> ) work in a function body?

[tekninja]

I wanted to write a function to take the tedium out of dynamically determining the total number of elements in an array.

Within the main method this is easy as I simply use:

sizeof( <array name> ) / sizeof( <array type> )

However I am running into an annoying problem when trying to pass an array reference to a function that is suppossed to return the same value as the above would.

my function reads:

int numElements( int array[] ){
    int sizeOfArray = sizeof( array ) / sizeof( int );
    return sizeOfArray;
}

and in the main body of my program the call looks like this (simplified to demonstrate):

int intArray[50];
cout << numElements( intArray );

However this does not print 50, instead it keeps printing 1.

I am guessing this has something to do with the fact that an array name is really just a pointer to the first element in the array, and as a result the function is only seeing the first element (and therefore is returning 1)... but is there anyway to get the function to see the whole array?

I realize I could probably save myself the headache if I just used vectors... but I kind of wanted to see if I could get this to work with arrays.

So really all I want to do is condense

sizeof( <array name> ) / sizeof( <array type> )

into a reusable function.

Thanks for any help!

[weaknessforcats]

Nope.

Use vectors.

sizeof( a thing) reports the size of the thing. In the case of an array this is the address of element 0, which is a pointer, so you get the size of the pointer.

sizeof type reports the sizof the type. In this case an int.

So you now have 4 / 4 and your array is 1 element. Oops.

Arrays in C++ are for very low level work. vector is required to be implemented as an array so all you would be doing with your function is duplicating code already done for you in vector.