Introduction to Pointers

What Are Pointers?

A pointer is a variable whose value is the address of another variable ie. direct address of the memory location. Like any variable or constant, you must declare a pointer before you can use it to store any variable address.

The general form of a pointer variable declaration is:

type *var-name;

Here, type is the pointer's base type; it must be a valid C data type and var-name is the name of the pointer variable.

The asterisk * you used to declare a pointer is the same asterisk that you use for multiplication.

However, in this statement the asterisk is being used to designate a variable as a pointer.

Following are the valid pointer declaration:

int *ip; /* pointer to an integer */

double *dp; /* pointer to a double */

float *fp; /* pointer to a float */

char *ch /* pointer to a character */

How to use Pointers?

#include < stdio.h >

int main ()

{

int var = 20; /* actual variable declaration */

int *ip; /* pointer variable declaration */

ip = & var; /* store address of var in pointer variable*/

printf("Address of var variable: %x\n", &var );

/* address stored in pointer variable */

printf("Address stored in ip variable: %x\n", ip );

/* access the value using the pointer */

printf("Value of *ip variable: %d\n", *ip );

return 0;

}

Output:

Address of var variable: bffd8b3c

Address stored in ip variable: bffd8b3c

Value of *ip variable: 20

NULL Pointers in C

It is always a good practice to assign a NULL value to a pointer variable in case you do not have exact address to be assigned. This is done at the time of variable declaration. A pointer that is assigned NULL is called a null pointer.

The NULL pointer is a constant with a value of zero defined in several standard libraries.

Consider the following program:

#include < stdio.h >

int main ()

{

int *ptr = NULL;

printf("The value of ptr is : %x\n", ptr );

return 0;

}

When the above code is compiled and executed, it produces following result:

The value of ptr is 0

Pointer to Pointer

A pointer to a pointer is a form of multiple indirection, or a chain of pointers. Normally, a pointer contains the address of a variable. When we define a pointer to a pointer, the first pointer contains the address of the second pointer, which points to the location that contains the actual value as shown below.

Pointer to Pointer in C:

A variable that is a pointer to a pointer must be declared as such. This is done by placing an additional asterisk in front of its name.

For example, following is the declaration to declare a pointer to a pointer of type int:

int **var;

When a target value is indirectly pointed to by a pointer to a pointer, accessing that value requires that the asterisk operator be applied twice, as is shown below in the example:

#include < stdio.h >

int main ()

{

int var;

int *ptr;

int **pptr;

var = 3000;

/* take the address of var */

ptr = & var;

/* take the address of ptr using address of operator & */

pptr = & ptr;

/* take the value using pptr */

printf("Value of var = %d\n", var );

printf("Value available at *ptr = %d\n", *ptr );

printf("Value available at **pptr = %d\n", **pptr);

return 0;

}

When the above code is compiled and executed, it produces following result:

Value of var = 3000

Value available at *ptr = 3000

Value available at **pptr = 3000

Author : Mohammed Ahmed

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