CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c++arraysstruct
user3822171
user3822171

Reputation: 55

Declaring an array of structs within the same struct

I'm not positive this is even possible, but I am basically trying to define a struct with an array of the same struct inside of it, like so

struct Node {
    int numMatches = 0;
    Node* leaves[26] = {};
};

Each node would contain a fixed-length array of pointers to other nodes (representing letters). I'm trying to recurse through these nodes, going into the relevant leaf whenever I need. I would initialize a "head" Node* array and bubble down that way. It's seg faulting immediately, and I can see why that might be - it doesn't know how much memory to alloc to an array of such structs. Not quite sure how to solve the problem though.

Pretty simple issue, but I haven't found any C++/C specific threads with this same question.

Thanks!

Upvotes: 0

Views: 133

Answers (1)

MarianD
MarianD

Reputation: 14201

In your struct you didn't use an array of the same struct, but an array of the pointers to the same struct - and it makes the difference.

Pointers have known length (e. g. 32-bit in 32-bit operating systems) regardless of the object they point to, so your struct simply allocates (probably)

  • 32 bits = 4 bytes for mumMatches

  • 26 * 32 bits = 26 * 4 bytes = 104 bytes for leaves

  • 108 bytes altogether

Upvotes: 1

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