CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c
user6760281
user6760281

Reputation:

What's this C code means? - Computer Systems A Programmer's Perspective

I would like to know the function show_int() below actually do...

This code is in the page 28 of Computer Systems A Programmer's Perspective.

#include <stdio.h>

typedef unsigned char *byte_pointer;

void show_bytes(byte_pointer start, int len) {
    int i;
    for (i = 0; i < len; i++) {
        printf("%.2x", start[i]);
    }
    printf("\n");
}

void show_int(int x) {
    show_bytes((byte_pointer) &x, sizeof(int));
}

void main() {
    show_int(20);
    getchar();
}

Upvotes: 1

Views: 312

Answers (1)

syntagma
syntagma

Reputation: 24344

The most important thing to understand is the cast to *byte_pointer (a.k.a. unsigned char):

(byte_pointer) &x

You may think of it as converting pointer to int (in your case: 20) to a series of bytes (that can be 4 or 8 or even more bytes, depending on the architecture).

What the show_bytes() function is then doing is just iterating over a byte array to show its subsequent bytes, formatting it to hexadecimal format.

Upvotes: 1

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