How to use Pointers In C++

2. Using a 2D array

Pointers are the symbolic representation of an address. In simple words, a pointer is something that stores the address of a variable in it. In this method, an array of string literals is created by an array of pointers in which each pointer points to a particular string.

Example:

C++

// C++ program to demonstrate 
// array of strings using
// pointers character array
#include <iostream>
 
// Driver code
int main()
{
  // Initialize array of pointer
  const char* colour[4]
      = { "Blue", "Red", "Orange", "Yellow" };
 
  // Printing Strings stored in 2D array
  for (int i = 0; i < 4; i++)
      std::cout << colour[i] << "\n";
 
  return 0;
}

Output

Blue
Red
Orange
Yellow

Explanation:

The number of strings is fixed, but needn’t be. The 4 may be omitted, and the compiler will compute the correct size.
These strings are constants and their contents cannot be changed. Because string literals (literally, the quoted strings) exist in a read-only area of memory, we must specify “const” here to prevent unwanted accesses that may crash the program.

Array of Strings in C++ – 5 Different Ways to Create

In C++, a string is usually just an array of (or a reference/points to) characters that ends with the NULL character ‘\0‘. A string is a 1-dimensional array of characters and an array of strings is a 2-dimensional array of characters where each row contains some string.

Below are the 5 different ways to create an Array of Strings in C++: