Hello guys,

        I am trying to write a function that returns the size of a
structure array.. (or number of arrays). Any of you know how to write
them?
I wrote it like this.. but it doesn't work..

int size(struct mn m[])
  {
  int i = 0;

  while(*m++)
    {
    i++;
    }
  return i;
  }

Please correct my errors..

thanks
Yue

If you insist on similar code for structs, adding an extra field
to your struct (e.g. "int valid;"), setting that field to a
non-zero value for _all_ elements of the array you are dealing
with, adding an extra "terminating" element with "valid" set
to zero, and changing the loop to

   while(m->valid)
   {
     ++m;
     ++i;
   }

is _one_ possible approach. As a stilistic issue, declaring size
as

   int size(struct nm *m);

will make this look less strange, imho.

Kurt

--
| Kurt Watzka                             Phone : +49-89-2180-6254

From the C FAQ:
"6.21:   Why doesn't sizeof properly report the size of an array when the
        array is a parameter to a function?

A:      The compiler pretends that the array parameter was declared as a
        pointer (see question 6.4), and sizeof reports the size of the
        pointer.

        References: H&S Sec. 7.5.2 p. 195."

In other words, all the function will receive is an address.  You do not
(in general) know that the last element of an array will be NULL.  In fact,
this would be very unusual.  One possible solution would be to put your
array inside a containing struct that had the count of elements.  Then you
could calculate total size by struct.count*sizeof element.

Use the sizeof operator.
See Kernighan/Ritchie P135.