Initializing a pointer in a separate function in C

Question

I need to do a simple thing, which I used to do many times in Java, but I\'m stuck in C (pure C, not C++). The situation looks like this:

int *a;

void initA         


        

Answer 1

You are assigning arr by-value inside initArray, so any change to the value of arr will be invisible to the outside world. You need to pass arr by pointer:

void initArray(int** arr) {
  // perform null-check, etc.
  *arr = malloc(SIZE*sizeof(int));
}
...
initArray(&a);