12

Following this comment, I've tried to google why, but my google-fu failed.

Comment from link:

[...] But the important thing is that arrays and pointers are different things in C.

Assuming you're not using any compiler extensions, you can't generally pass an array itself to a function, but you can pass a pointer, and index a pointer as if it were an array.

You're effectively complaining that pointers have no length attached. You should be complaining that arrays can't be passed as function arguments, or that arrays degrade to pointers implicitly.

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  • I am not sure it is the answer, but part of the type of an array is its size, so I believe you would have to define a function for every size you want to accept. – clcto Jun 20 '14 at 16:56
  • Do you mean as function pointers? Please clarify the question. – user949300 Jun 20 '14 at 16:57
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    @user949300 No, from the context of the comment it's pretty clear; you can't pass an array to a function because it becomes a pointer, and he wants to know why this is the case. – Doval Jun 20 '14 at 17:03
  • @DocBrown rlemon proposed an edit for this. – Florian Margaine Jun 20 '14 at 17:09
18

My first guess for the reason was simply because of performance and memory saving reasons, and for the ease of compiler implementation as well (especially for the kind of computers at the time when C was invented). Passing huge arrays "by value" seemed to have a huge impact at the stack, it needs a full array copy operation for each function call, and probably the compiler must be smarter to output the correct assembly code (though the last point is debatable). It would also be more difficult to treat dynamically allocated arrays the same way as statically allocated arrays (from the viewpoint of the language's syntax).

EDIT: after reading some parts from this link, I think the real reason (and the reason why arrays in structs are treated as value types, while sole arrays are not) is the backward compatibility to C's predecessor B. Here is the cite from Dennis Ritchie:

[...} The solution constituted the crucial jump in the evolutionary chain between typeless BCPL and typed C. It eliminated the materialization of the pointer in storage, and instead caused the creation of the pointer when the array name is mentioned in an expression. The rule, which survives in today's C, is that values of array type are converted, when they appear in expressions, into pointers to the first of the objects making up the array.

This invention enabled most existing B code to continue to work, despite the underlying shift in the language's semantics. [..]

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    A struct Foo { int array[N]; } can be passed by value. And the last bit about treating dynamic and static allocations the same seems fishy (an array in the strictest sense always includes a size, the unifying concepts for things like array indexing are pointers coupled with array-to-pointer decay), could you elaborate? – user7043 Jun 20 '14 at 17:30
  • @delnan: I think the general principles stated here are sound. Clearly, if you wrap your array in a struct, you're specifying your intent. In the general case, you're almost always going to pass by reference. – Robert Harvey Jun 20 '14 at 17:33
  • I also find the comment referenced in the OP unnecessarily pedantic. Clearly you're passing a pointer rather than an array by value. What's equally true, though, is that you're effectively passing an array by reference. If the objection is that there's no length attached, it's easy enough to pass that as well. – Robert Harvey Jun 20 '14 at 17:37
  • @RobertHarvey That's still an asymmetry in the type system: Everything is passed by value, except array types (even though arrays that are part of a struct type are passed by value), and it even uses the exact same notation (both at call site and in the function signature). – user7043 Jun 20 '14 at 17:48
  • @delnan: Why is that relevant, other than you have to remember it? – Robert Harvey Jun 20 '14 at 18:54
9

A PDP minicomputer with only 8 kB of memory can't allocate a very large stack. So, on such a machine, one has to be careful in a language design (or evolution) to be able to minimize what needs to go on the stack for expected common subroutine call usage. C is still used today to program extremely memory constrained (a few kB) embedded systems, so the trade-off is usually a good one.

On a processor architecture which has very few registers, passing any array by pointer rather than by value more often allows a register to be used as a subroutine call optimization.

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  • 2
    I have some boards that have 256 bytes of RAM for the data and 2K EEPROM for the code. You don't want to make a copy of an array there. – Jerry Jeremiah Mar 16 '16 at 21:39

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