rand() & Microsoft ??!!!

[AraK]

Hi,

this is my first post in this great forum.

I needed to produce an array of random numbers. so I decided to dumb the array to a file for testing purpose only. I used this function :

void GeneratePass( const char* passPath, size_t units ){

  std::ofstream passFile;
  size_t *pass = new size_t[units];
	
  srand( __time32_t(NULL) );

  for( size_t C = 0; C < units; C++ )
    pass[C] = rand();	

  passFile.open( passPath, std::ios::binary );
  passFile.write( reinterpret_cast<char*>(&pass), units * sizeof(size_t) );
  passFile.close();

  delete[] pass;

  return;
}

I opened the file using Notepad++ to see the file in hex mode, I got repeated values :


and I got something strange :


could someone please explain what's happening ??!!!
I am using VC++ 2008 Express, WinXP SP2.

Thanks..

[*io*]

Your passing '&pass' (the address of the pointer) as opposed to 'pass' which is the pointer to the data.

void GeneratePass( const char* passPath, size_t units ){

  std::ofstream passFile;
  size_t *pass = new size_t[units];
	
  srand( __time32_t(NULL) );

  for( size_t C = 0; C < units; C++ )
    pass[C] = rand();	

  passFile.open( passPath, std::ios::binary );
  passFile.write( reinterpret_cast<char*>(pass), units * sizeof(size_t) );
  passFile.close();

  delete[] pass;

  return;
}

[AraK]

Thanks alot *io* ,

it works fine now.