C++ Brain Teasers: Exercise Your Mind/

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Discussion: Sizing Up Some Characters

Discussion: Sizing Up Some Characters

Execute the code to understand the output and gain insights into array size determination and function parameter behavior.

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Run the code

Now, it’s time to execute the code and observe the output.

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#include <iostream>
void serialize(char characters[])
{
   std::cout << sizeof(characters) << "\n";
}
int main()
{
    char characters[] = {'a', 'b', 'c'};
    std::cout << sizeof(characters) << "\n";
    std::cout << sizeof(characters) / sizeof(characters[0]) << "\n";
    serialize(characters);
}

Understanding the output

The program defines a characters array with three elements. We then print the size of this array in various ways. What does the sizeof operator do in each case? Which of them are defined by the standard, and which are implementation-defined? And what do they print on the computer?

Defining the array

First, the program defines a char characters[] = {'a', 'b', 'c'} array. We then print the size of this array using the sizeof operator. The sizeof operator yields the number of bytes occupied by its operand, which in this case is 3, since each char is one byte, and there are three of them.

The sizeof()

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