In C, when passing an array to a function, what is actually passed?

When passing an array to a function in C, the actual argument that is passed is the base address of the array. This means that instead of passing all the individual elements of the array, C passes the memory location of the first element. This is an important aspect of how arrays function in C and is tied to how memory management works in the language.

When the function receives this address, it can access and manipulate the entire array by indexing from this base address. For example, if you pass an array called myArray, the function can refer to its elements by using indices, starting from myArray[0] which would be directly referencing the memory location passed.

This approach is efficient because it avoids copying potentially large amounts of data (the array elements themselves) into the function's stack frame, which would be resource-intensive. Instead, only a single memory address is moved, allowing functions to handle large data structures while only requiring minimal overhead.

In contrast, passing just the value of the elements would require multiple copies of data, which is not how array passing is intended to work in C. The function has access to the entire array through pointer arithmetic by adding the appropriate index to the base address. The other options like passing the first element