Pointers and Arrays [ pointers to int vs pointers to char]

Question

Why do pointers behave differently when they are pointing to an integer array and a character array?

For example

int num[] = {1,2,3};
cout << num ;

This prints out the ADDRESS of the first element

char list[] = { '1', '2', '3'};
cout << list ;

This prints out the VALUE of entire elements of array!

Likewise

cout << (num+1) ;

prints out the ADDRESS of the second element. While

cout << (list+1);

prints out the VALUE of entire array beginning from the second element

From my understanding, array name is a pointer to the first element of the array. Without the dereference operator(*), the pointer should return the address of the element. But why is the char pointer returning the value?

Answer 1

It is not pointers behaving differently: the behavior is how C++ standard library handles pointer output.

Specifically, operator << has a non-member overload for const char * , which handles null-terminated C strings. This is the overload applied to printing char array. Note that your character array is not null-terminated, so printing it produces undefined behavior. You can fix this by adding zero to the array of characters:

char list[] = { '1', '2', '3', '\0'};

There is also an overload that takes void * , which applies to printing an int pointer.