Doesn’t a 2D array decay to pointer to pointer

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Yep you are missing out on a lot 🙂

To avoid another wall of text I’ll link to an answer I wrote earlier today explaining multi-dimensional arrays.

With that in mind, arr is a 1-D array with 4 elements, each of which is an array of 5 ints.
When used in an expression other than &arr or sizeof arr, this decays to &arr[0]. But what is &arr[0]? It is a pointer, and importantly, an rvalue.

Since &arr[0] is a pointer, it can’t decay further. (Arrays decay, pointers don’t). Furthermore, it’s an rvalue. Even if it could decay into a pointer, where would that pointer point? You can’t point at an rvalue. (What is &(x+y) ? )

Another way of looking at it is to remember that int arr[4][5]; is a contiguous bloc of 20 ints, grouped into 4 lots of 5 within the compiler’s mind, but with no special marking in memory at runtime.

If there were “double decay” then what would the int ** point to? It must point to an int * by definition. But where in memory is that int * ? There are certainly not a bunch of pointers hanging around in memory just in case this situation occurs.

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