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A string-literal row of a 2-D char array stored its address

Measured (before)

char s[2][8] = {"ab", "cd"};
for (int i = 0; i < 16; i++) printf("%d,", ((char*)s)[i]);



gcc:  97,98,0,0,0,0,0,0,99,100,0,0,0,0,0,0,
pxx: -74,-58,0,0,0,0,0,0, 0,  0,0,0,0,0,0,0,

Those two leading bytes are the low bytes of the two literals' addresses. So strcmp(s[0], "ab") answered -90 and printf("%s", s[1]) printed nothing. Local and global were both wrong; char b[8] = "ab" (one dimension) was always right, which is what kept this hidden — the 1-D form is the one everybody tests.

Root cause — the row is not a scalar, and both paths thought it was

A 2-D initializer reaches an element with the string literal as the current token, and both of the two paths that can get there called their scalar leaf, which is ParseCExpr — and ParseCExpr on a string literal correctly yields its ADDRESS. Stored into a char element, that address is truncated to its low byte. Two paths because a global and a local do not share this code:

Braced rows ({{"ab"},{"cd"}}) enter each path one level deeper, so each site has to place the row from the enclosing sub-aggregate's base rather than from the current cursor.

Fix

CInitFillCharFlat — the existing member fill, addressed by FLAT element index — plus a string arm in each of the two element loops that computes the row's extent (the product of the dims below the current brace depth, stepped out one level when the row was itself braced), fills the characters, writes the terminating NUL if the row has room, and leaves the rest of the row zero.

Same fill at both sites rather than two spellings of it; the record-member path keeps its own copy only because it is addressed by field path rather than by flat index.

Result

test/cstr_table_2d_rows.c (14 assertions: global and local, plain and braced rows, 3-D, a row with no room for the NUL, char-literal rows unaffected, the rows still writable afterwards, and the row stride) returns 42 under both gcc and pxx.

Gate

make compiler/pascal26 + the test + tools/gate.sh quick — GREEN.

Log