I've been trying to wrap my head around this the whole day...

Basically, I have a struct called State that has a name and another one called StateMachine with a name, an array of states and total number of states added:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

typedef struct State {
  const char * name;

} State;

typedef struct StateMachine {
  const char * name;

  int total_states;
  State ** states;

} StateMachine;

StateMachine * create_state_machine(const char* name) {
  StateMachine * temp;

  temp = malloc(sizeof(struct StateMachine));

  if (temp == NULL) {
    exit(127);
  }

  temp->name = name;
  temp->total_states = 0;

  temp->states = malloc(sizeof(struct State));
  return temp;
}

void destroy_state_machine(StateMachine* state_machine) {
  free(state_machine);
}

State * add_state(StateMachine* state_machine, const char* name) {
  State * temp;

  temp = malloc(sizeof(struct State));

  if (temp == NULL) {
    exit(127);
  }

  temp->name = name;

  state_machine->states[state_machine->total_states]= temp;
  state_machine->total_states++;

  return temp;
}

int main(int argc, char **argv) {

  StateMachine * state_machine;

  State * init;
  State * foo;
  State * bar;

  state_machine = create_state_machine("My State Machine");

  init = add_state(state_machine, "Init");
  foo  = add_state(state_machine, "Foo");
  bar  = add_state(state_machine, "Bar");

  int i = 0;

  for(i; i< state_machine->total_states; i++) {
    printf("--> [%d] state: %s\n", i, state_machine->states[i]->name);
  }

}

For some reason (read low C-fu / years of ruby/python/php) I'm unable to express the fact that states is an Array of State(s). The above code prints:

--> [0] state: ~
--> [1] state: Foo
--> [2] state: Bar

What happened with the first state added?

If I malloc the states array on the first state added (e.g. state_machine =

c arrays struct
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