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Chapter 5. Pointers

sorting the programmers from the students

5.1. The Basics

A limitation you may have noticed is that functions can only affect your program via their return value, so what do you do when you want a function to alter more than one variable? You use pointers. A pointer is a special kind of variable. Pointers are designed for storing memory address i.e. the address of another variable. Declaring a pointer is the same as declaring a normal variable except you stick an asterisk '*' in front of the variables identifier. There are two new operators you will need to know to work with pointers. The "address of" operator '&' and the "dereferencing" operator '*'. Both are prefix unary operators. When you place an ampersand in front of a variable you will get it's address, this can be store in a pointer. When you place an asterisk in front of a pointer you will get the value at the memory address pointed to. As usual, we'll look at a quick code example to show how simple this is.

Example 5-1. pointers_are_simple.c

#include <stdio.h>

int
main()
{
  int my_variable = 6, other_variable = 10;
  int *my_pointer;

  printf("the address of my_variable is    : %p\n", &my_variable);
  printf("the address of other_variable is : %p\n", &other_variable);

  my_pointer = &my_variable;

  printf("\nafter \"my_pointer = &my_variable\":\n");
  printf("\tthe value of my_pointer is %p\n", my_pointer);
  printf("\tthe value at that address is %d\n", *my_pointer);

  my_pointer = &other_variable;

  printf("\nafter \"my_pointer = &other_variable\":\n");
  printf("\tthe value of my_pointer is %p\n", my_pointer);
  printf("\tthe value at that address is %d\n", *my_pointer);

  return 0;
}
      
The output shows you the address of the two variables, the addresses your system assigns to the variables will be different to mine. In printf() you'll notice we used %p to display the addresses. This is the conversion specifier for all pointers. Anyway, here's the output I got:
the address of my_variable is    : 0xbffffa18
the address of other_variable is : 0xbffffa14

after "my_pointer = &my_variable":
        the value of my_pointer is 0xbffffa18
        the value at that address is 6

after "my_pointer = &other_variable":
        the value of my_pointer is 0xbffffa14
        the value at that address is 10
     
There. That's not too complicated. Once you are comfortable with pointers you're well on your way to mastering C.

 
 
  Published under the terms of the GNU General Public License Design by Interspire