Segmentation Fault When Accessing Elements of a 2D Array via Pointers
I've been struggling with this for a few days now and could really use some help. I'm working with a segmentation fault when trying to access elements of a dynamically allocated 2D array in C. The question seems to arise when I attempt to access elements using a pointer arithmetic method rather than direct indexing. I have implemented the following code: ```c #include <stdio.h> #include <stdlib.h> int main() { int rows = 3, cols = 4; int **array = malloc(rows * sizeof(int *)); for (int i = 0; i < rows; i++) { array[i] = malloc(cols * sizeof(int)); } // Initializing the 2D array for (int i = 0; i < rows; i++) { for (int j = 0; j < cols; j++) { array[i][j] = i * cols + j; } } // Trying to access elements using pointer arithmetic int *ptr = (int *)array; printf("Element [1][2]: %d\n", *(ptr + (1 * cols + 2))); // Should print 6 // Freeing memory for (int i = 0; i < rows; i++) { free(array[i]); } free(array); return 0; } ``` When I run the program, I get a segmentation fault on the line where I'm trying to print `Element [1][2]`. I've confirmed that the dynamic allocation is successful, and I'm able to access elements using the standard indexing method like `array[1][2]`. However, when I switch to pointer arithmetic, it fails. I suspect that the scenario might be due to how I'm interpreting the 2D array as a single pointer, but I'm not quite sure where I'm going wrong. I've also tried debugging with `gdb`, but it doesn't provide much clarity on the segmentation fault's source. Can anyone guide to understand why the pointer arithmetic isn't working in this case? I've been using C for about a year now. Any advice would be much appreciated. Could this be a known issue?