Integer pointers and the 'incompatible pointer type warning'

Question

I have read many of the replies to this problem but am not understanding it as it relates to my code so I must ask and hope for clarity.

The program is a magic square verifier for my midterm, and the code runs and outputs properly but I am getting warnings and so I want to clean it up before I submit it. There are actually two bits that give warnings but I am hoping that understanding the first one will help me clean up the second, since I want to understand not just paste an answer.

The code in question:

int ms[COLS][COLS] = 
{
{16,  3,  2, 13 },
{ 5, 10, 11,  8 },
{ 9,  6,  7, 12 },
{ 4, 15, 14,  1 }
}; 

const int* msPtr = ms;

I am trying to set up a constant integer pointer to the first element of my array, something I can pass on to functions so they can use but not modify my array values. I suspect that I am needing to either 'cast' something or have a syntax error here.

The warning is "[Warning] initialization from incompatible pointer type" referring to the "const int* msPtr = ms;" line above.

Thank you for your time.

Answer 1

You could do:

const int * pointer_to_1st_int_of_ms = &ms[0][0];

Answer 2

It should be

const int (* msPtr)[COLS] = ms;

Since ms is 2D array, so require 2D int pointer.