passing different structure type in c for functions - pointers

Question

I have a following code :
typedef struct PStruct{
int len;
char* data;
}PointerStruct;
typedef struct AStruct{
int len;
char data[256];
}ArrayStruct;
void checkFunc(PointerStruct* myData)
{
if (0 == myData || 0 == myData->data){
printf("error\n");
}
}
int main()
{
ArrayStruct my_data;
my_data.len = 256;
char data[] = "data is sent";
my_data.data = &data;
checkFunc((PointerStruct*)my_data);
return 0;
}
is there any wrong in passing structure which has array. where as the required is pointer.
please let me know.

Answer 1

There are a couple of points to be considered in your program.
char data[] = "data is sent";
This is a character array of 13 characters. Hence, my_data.data = &data; will give a compilation error as shown below
error: incompatible types when assigning to type 'char[256]' from type 'char (*)[13]'
To copy your string, you could probably use strcpy as shown below
strcpy(my_data.data, data);
Next point is passing the pointer to the object. In this call, checkFunc((PointerStruct*)my_data);, you are passing the instance of the object to the function call, but are type-casting as a pointer. You would face compilation issues due to the mismatch of the datatypes as error: cannot convert to a pointer type
To overcome this error, you should pass a reference to your my_data object as checkFunc((PointerStruct*) &my_data);. Hence, your new main function would look like
int main()
{
ArrayStruct my_data;
my_data.len = 256;
char data[] = "data is sent";
//my_data.data = &data;
strcpy(my_data.data, data); // Use of strcpy. You would require to include <string.h>
checkFunc((PointerStruct*)(&my_data)); // Pass a reference and not by value
return 0;
}
With these changes, your code should work fine.