How should I parse and understand the following sentence (“…, … of which …”)?

Question

From MSDN - IDispatch::GetIDsOfNames method:

rgDispId

Caller-allocated array, each element of which contains an identifier (ID) corresponding to one of the names passed in the rgszNames array.

I've understood those __ which things as just inversion of prepositions. For example, when I see this clause: “Trees of which a forest consists.”, I just move the of to the end of it: “Trees which a forest consists of.”

But in this case, it seems the method does not work properly. I cannot understand it: “Caller-allocated array, each element which contains an identifier (ID) corresponding to one of the names passed in the rgszNames array of.”

I interpreted the sentence as “A caller-allocated array whose elements contain an ID corresponding to one of the names passed in the rgszNames array”. I can guess what it means, but I want to understand the grammatical structure of the sentence, so as to know the reason why it brings the meaning.

I've read:

• https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/322836/how-to-correctly-apply-in-which-of-which-at-which-to-which-etc

Answer 1

Your guess is correct. Which does indeed refer back to the caller-allocated array.

You are not wrong in replacing of which with whose, but especially in formal writing, there are people that like to stick to using who for people only (or at least, animate objects).

After all, whose is nothing else than a short version of of whom, completely similar to of which. But we don't have an equivalent "short version" of of which (which could be *which's or something like that?).

So formally we use who for people, which for objects:

The man of whom the car was stolen = The man whose car was stolen.
The car of which the tires were stolen = *The car which's tires were stolen.

Note that that last sentence is not correct, I just included it for illustration!