Passing a structure (pointer to structure?) to a function

Question

Ok so, I'm trying to write a program which numerically evaluates integrals using Simpson's 3/8 rule. I'm having issues passing the values from Integral *newintegral to the simpson() function. I'm not massively confident in my understanding of structures and pointers, and I've been reviewing the lecture notes and checking online for information all day and I still can't understand why it's not working.

At the moment when I try to build my program it comes up with a number of errors, particularly: on line 46 "expected expression before Integral" and on most of 55-63 "invalid type of argument of '->' (have 'Integral') I don't understand why the first one is occurring because all my lecturers examples of this type of thing, when passing a structure to a function just have the syntax func(Struct_define_name individual_struct_name). I thought this is what I was doing with mind (Integral being the name of the structure type and i being the specific structure) but obviously not.

I think these two problems are connected so I included all of my code for context, however the lines which actually have errors are 46 and 55-63 as mentioned above. I've probably defined the structure wrong in the first place or something though.

(Incidentally the maths in the simpson() function doesn't actually work properly now anyway, but that's not something I'm concerned about)

Also I tried looking at other similar questions but I didn't understand what the other code was doing so I couldn't extrapolate how to fix my code from that. I know this isn't very relevant to other people but I really don't understand programming well enough to try and phrase my question in a general sense...

'#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <math.h>

typedef struct integral {
    double result, limits[2];
    int degree;
    double coefficients[];
} Integral;

// Prototype of function that calculates integral using Simpson's 3/8 rule
double simpson(Integral i);


// function (?) which initialises structure
Integral *newintegral() {
    Integral *i = malloc(sizeof *i);
    double lim1_in, lim2_in;
    int degree_input, n;

    printf("Please enter the degree of the polynomial.\n");
    scanf("%d", &degree_input);
    i->degree = degree_input;

    printf("Please enter the %d coefficients of the polynomial, starting\n"
           "from the highest power term in the polynomial.\n", (i->degree+1));

        for (n=i->degree+1; n>0; n=n-1) {
            scanf("%lg", &i->coefficients[n-1]);
}

    printf("Please enter the upper limit of the integral.\n");
    scanf("%lg", &lim1_in);
    i->limits[0] = lim1_in;

    printf("Please enter the lower limit of the integral.\n");
    scanf("%lg", &lim2_in);
    i->limits[1] = lim2_in;

    return i;
}


int main() {
    Integral *i = newintegral();
    simpson(Integral i);
    return 0;
}


double simpson(Integral i) {
    int n;
    double term1, term2, term3, term4;

    for (n=(i->degree); n>0; n=n-1) {
        term1=(pow(i->limits[1],n)*(i->coefficients[n]))+term1;
        term2=(pow(((((2*(i->limits[1]))+(i->limits[0])))/3),n)*(i->coefficients[n]))+term2;
        term3=(pow(((((2*(i->limits[0]))+(i->limits[1])))/3),n)*(i->coefficients[n]))+term3;
        term4=(pow(i->limits[0],n)*(i->coefficients[n]))+term4;
    }
    i->result = (((i->limits[0])-(i->limits[1]))/8)*(term1+(3*term2)+(3*term3)+term4);

    printf("The integral is %lg\n", i->result);

    return 0;
}'

Answer 1

You're currently passing a pointer to a function that takes a single Integral argument.

Your prototype, double simpson(Integral i); tells the compiler "declare a function called simpson that returns a double and takes a single Integral referenced by the identifier i inside the function.

However, in main() you say:

int main() {
    //declare a pointer to an Integral and assign it to the return of 'i'
    Integral *i = newintegral();
    //call the function simpson with i.  
    //However, you are redeclaring the type of the function argument, so the compiler will complain.
    simpson(Integral i);
    return 0;
}

Your call, simpson(Integral i); will not work because you are redeclaring the type of the function argument. The compiler will state:

:46:13: error: expected expression before ‘Integral’

What you really need is for simpson() to take a pointer to Integral as its argument. You have actually already handled this inside the function, (using i->) but your function prototype is telling the compiler that you are passing the whole struct Integral as the function argument.

Solution:

Change your function prototype as follows:

double simpson(Integral *i); // function returning double taking single pointer to an Integral named i.

...and change main() to look like the following:

int main(void) { //In C main has two valid definitions: 
                 //int main(void), or int main(int argc, char **argv)

    Integral *i = newintegral();
    simpson(i);
    return 0;
}

So in conclusion, your understanding of pointers is correct, but not how you pass a pointer to a function.

**Sidenote: Remember to always build your code with all warnings enabled. The compiler will give you very useful diagnostics that will help you quickly find solutions to problems like this. For GCC, as a minimum, use gcc -Wall myprogram.c

Answer 2

Two obvious problems:-

Line 46 : simpson(Integral i);

...should be just simpson(i);. Putting a type there is simply an error.

And this, later:

double simpson(Integral i) 

.. tells the compiler to pass in Integral object yet you use the indirection operator i.e i->limits as though you'd been passed a pointer. The easiest fix is to make the function expect a pointer, like this:

double simpson(Integral *i)