-POINTERS IN C-

Programming Fundamentals

Programming Fundamentals By Priya Singh (Assistant Professor,

DTU)
Background
• A pointer is a derived data type in C.
• It is built from one of the fundamental data types available in C.
• Pointers contain memory addresses as their values.
• Pointers can be used to access and manipulate data stored in the
memory.
• Pointers allow C to support dynamic memory management.
• Pointer is an efficient tool to manipulate dynamic data-structures like
linked list, stack, queue, structures etc.

Programming Fundamentals By Priya Singh (Assistant Professor, DTU)

Whenever we declare a variable, the system allocates a location to hold
the value of the variable.
Since, every byte has a unique address, this location will have its own
address.
E.g. int quantity = 179;

Address of a variable is address of 1st byte of that variable.

Programming Fundamentals By Priya Singh (Assistant Professor, DTU)

Definition
• Memory addresses are simply numbers, and can be assigned to some
variables, that can be stored in memory, like any other variable.
• Such variables that hold memory addresses are called pointer
variables.
• A pointer variable is nothing but a variable that contains an address,
which is a location of another variable in memory.
• E.g.: Here, p is a pointer variable storing address of quantity variable.

Programming Fundamentals By Priya Singh (Assistant Professor, DTU)

Some terminologies
• There are 3 important terminologies in pointers:
a. Pointer constants: memory address
within a computer
b. Pointer values: We cannot save the
value of a memory address directly.
We can only obtain the value
through the variable stored there using & operator. It may change
across different runs.
b. Pointer variables: It is a variable that stores pointer value.

Programming Fundamentals By Priya Singh (Assistant Professor, DTU)

ACCESSING THE ADDRESS OF A VARIABLE

• & (ampersand) operator allows accessing the address of a variable.

• E.g. int var=2; //var means value inside ‘a’ (2)

2
var : 1000

printf(“%d”, &var); //&var means 1000

Programming Fundamentals By Priya Singh (Assistant Professor, DTU)

DECLARING POINTER VARIABLES

• In C, every variable must be declared for its type.

• To differentiate b/w normal (data) variable and pointer variable, C
enforces to declare pointer variable with a *(unary star
operator/asterisk).
• Syntax:

Programming Fundamentals By Priya Singh (Assistant Professor, DTU)

• E.g.:
1. int *p; //p is a pointer variable that holds address of an integer
datatype

2.float *q; // q is a pointer variable that holds address of a float datatype

• Valid declarations:

Programming Fundamentals By Priya Singh (Assistant Professor, DTU)

INITIALIZATION OF POINTER VARIABLES
• The process of initializing address of a variable to a pointer variable is
called initialization.
• E.g.

• We must ensure that the pointer variables always point to the

corresponding type of data otherwise compiler will give erroneous
output because we are trying to assign the address of a different
datatype.
• E.g.: int a=5;
float *b=&a; //wrong as pointer variable b expects address of
float datatype but we are assigning address of int datatype.
Programming Fundamentals By Priya Singh (Assistant Professor, DTU)
ACCESSING A VARIABLE THROUGH ITS POINTER
• Once a pointer has been assigned the address of a variable, we can
access the pointer variable using *(asterisk)
• *: indirection operator/dereference operator
• E.g.:

See line: n=*p;

Here *p indicates value at (address stored at p: which is address of
variable quantity).
*p and quantity both will produce value 179.

Programming Fundamentals By Priya Singh (Assistant Professor, DTU)

Other example:

int a; *b;
a=5;
b=&a;
int n= *b;
OR
n=*&a;
OR
n=a; //all three are same

Programming Fundamentals By Priya Singh (Assistant Professor, DTU)

CHAIN OF POINTERS
• It is possible to make a pointer to point to another pointer, thus
creating a chain of pointers.
• E.g.:

Here, variable is a data-variable,

p1 is a pointer variable storing address of variable, and
p2 is a pointer variable storing address of pointer variable p1.
Declaration looks like this:
int variable; *p1; **p2,***p3;

Programming Fundamentals By Priya Singh (Assistant Professor, DTU)

POINTER EXPRESSIONS
• Like data variables, pointer variables can be used in expressions.
• E.g.: int a=1, *b=&a, **c=&b;
int res = a + *b + **c; //3
**c = **c+2; //3 i.e. value of ‘a’
a = a + *b; //3+3=6

Note: int division_res = **c/*b (wrong: as in C, /* indicates start of

multi-line comment)
int division_res = a/ *b (Correct: introduce space between /
and *)

Programming Fundamentals By Priya Singh (Assistant Professor, DTU)

• C allows us to add integers to or subtract integers from pointers, as well as to
subtract one pointer from another.
E.g.
int *p1,*p2;
int *p3=p1 + 4;
p2= p2–2;
If p1 and p2 are both pointers to the same array, then p2 – p1 gives the number
of elements between p1 and p2.
E.g.: int arr[5]={1,2,3,4,5};
int *p1= &arr[0] OR arr, *p2=&arr[4] OR arr+4;
int num_ele = p2-p1; //number of ele b/w p2 and p1
// (1020-1000)=20/4=5 (consider base address as
1000)

Programming Fundamentals By Priya Singh (Assistant Professor, DTU)

Other examples:
• p1++ and -- p2; (increment/decrement)
• sum += *p2; (arithmetic)
• p1 > p2, p1 = = p2, and p1 != p2 (relational operators)

• We may not use pointers in division or multiplication, or addition.

• E.g.: p1 / p2 or p1 * p2 or p1 / 3 (not allowed)

Programming Fundamentals By Priya Singh (Assistant Professor, DTU)

POINTER INCREMENTS AND SCALE FACTOR
• When a pointer variable is incremented/decremented, its value is
inc/dec by the length of datatype that is called scale factor.
• E.g. int *ptr1;
double *ptr2;
ptr1=ptr1+1;
ptr2++;
Effect of increment on ptr1 and ptr2:
100 104
ptr1 ptr1 ptr1 ptr1

200 208
ptr2 ptr2 ptr2 ptr2 ptr2 ptr2 ptr2 ptr2

Programming Fundamentals By Priya Singh (Assistant Professor, DTU)

RULES FOR POINTER OPERATIONS

1. A pointer variable can be assigned the address of another variable.

2. A pointer variable can be assigned the values of another pointer
variable.
3. A pointer variable can be initialized with NULL or zero value.
4. A pointer variable can work with ++ or - - operator.
5. An integer value may be added or subtracted from a pointer variable
(scale factor).

Programming Fundamentals By Priya Singh (Assistant Professor, DTU)

6. When two pointers point to the same array, one pointer variable can
be subtracted from another (provides #elements b/w these two
addresses)
7. When two pointers point to the objects of the same data types, they
can be compared using relational operators.
8. A pointer variable cannot be multiplied by a constant.
9. Two pointer variables can not be added.
10. A value cannot be assigned to an arbitrary address (i.e., &x = 100; is
illegal).

Programming Fundamentals By Priya Singh (Assistant Professor, DTU)

POINTERS AND ARRAYS
• When an array is declared, compiler allocates base-address and
sufficient contiguous memory location to hold entire array.
• Base address: address of 1st element/0th index.
E.g.: int x[5]= {1,2,3,4,5}; //scale factor: 2

Programming Fundamentals By Priya Singh (Assistant Professor, DTU)

• Array name (say ‘x’ as per last example) represents address of 0th
index element. So, x and &x[0] are same.
• E.g. int *p;
p = &x[0];
To access elements of the array using pointer variable, we can use ++.
E.g.:

Also, address of x[i] = (base address) + (i x scale factor of datatype)

= (1000) + (3 x 2) = 1006

Programming Fundamentals By Priya Singh (Assistant Professor, DTU)

 POINTERS AND CHARACTER STRINGS
• Strings are internally treated as character arrays.
• Declaration string using array notation: char string [5] = “good”;
• Declaring string using pointers: char *str = “good”;

char *str = “good”; //not a string copy, because the variable str is a
pointer, not a string
We can print the content of the string str using either printf or puts:
printf(“%s”, str);
puts (str);
Programming Fundamentals By Priya Singh (Assistant Professor, DTU)
ARRAY OF POINTERS
• Consider declaration of an array of strings.
Way-1: char name [3][25];
Way-2: char *name[3] = { “New Zealand”, Australia”, “India” };
//Here, name is an array having three elements where every element is a
pointer to character.

Programming Fundamentals By Priya Singh (Assistant Professor, DTU)

• Difference between array of pointers and pointer to an array :

Note: Precedence of * is lower than []

int *p[3]; //p is an array of 3 elements where every element is a pointer

to an int.
int (*p)[3]; //p is a pointer to an array of 3 elements

Programming Fundamentals By Priya Singh (Assistant Professor, DTU)

POINTERS AND STRUCTURES
• *ptr: ptr is a pointer to struct inventory
• Let’s assign address of 0th struct element to ptr

• We can access individual struct elements using → (arrow operator

(also known as member selection operator)

Programming Fundamentals By Priya Singh (Assistant Professor, DTU)

Iterating through an array of structure:

We can also use against ptr→number (same for other data-

members)

Programming Fundamentals By Priya Singh (Assistant Professor, DTU)

POINTERS AS FUNCTION ARGUMENTS
• When we pass addresses to a function, the parameters receiving the
addresses should be pointers.
• Call by value: passing value of variable inside a function call.
• Call by reference: passing address of a variable inside a function call.
• When call by reference is made, changes are made to the actual
variables (arguments from the function call).
• Pointer variable is required in function definition to hold the address
of variable.

Programming Fundamentals By Priya Singh (Assistant Professor, DTU)

• Example: Actual arguments- arguments passed
from calling function. (x in main)
Formal arguments- arguments in
function definition to store copy of
value passed from calling function

Here, calling function: main(); called function: change().

At the time of function call to change(), address of variable ‘x’ is passed (&x)
At the time of function definition, address of variable ‘x’ is received in
pointer variable ‘*p.
*p= *p+10 (value at address of p i.e. x is getting modified to 20+10=320)

Programming Fundamentals By Priya Singh (Assistant Professor, DTU)

FUNCTIONS RETURNING POINTERS
• A function can return a single value by its name or return multiple
values through pointer parameters (as pointers directly operate on
actual arguments).
• Since pointers are a data type in C, we can also force a function to
return a pointer to a calling function.
• So, return type should be <datatype>*
• E.g. int * sum(int a, int b);
Here, sum is a function having two integer arguments ‘a’ and ‘b’ and
returning an int*.

Programming Fundamentals By Priya Singh (Assistant Professor, DTU)

POINTERS TO FUNCTIONS
• A function, like variable, has a type and an address location in the
memory.
• It is possible to declare a pointer to a function, which can then be used
as an argument in another function.
• Syntax:
Here fptr is pointer to a function, where return type of function is ‘type’

E.g. int (*sum) (int a, int b);

Here sum is a pointer to a function that receives ‘a’ and ‘b’ as arguments
and returns an int.

Programming Fundamentals By Priya Singh (Assistant Professor, DTU)

Pointer to a function vs function with pointer return type
• Remember type (*fptr) (); and type *fptr(); are different.
• The later will declare a function named fptr that has return type as
type*.
• Say, int (*sum)(int a, int b);

• sum is a function with two int arguments a and b that returns an

integer pointer

Programming Fundamentals By Priya Singh (Assistant Professor, DTU)

Assigning function to a pointer
• It is possible to make a function pointer point to a specific function.
E.g. int sum(int, int); //a function named sum having 2 int arguments and single return value-int
int (*p1)(); //p1 is a pointer to a function having return type as int
p1 = sum; //p1 points to function sum

We can call function sum as follows:

1. sum(2,3); //using function name
2. (*p1)(2,3); //using pointer to a function

Programming Fundamentals By Priya Singh (Assistant Professor, DTU)

Compatibility and Casting
• A variable declared as a pointer is not just a pointer type variable.
• A pointer always has a type(int, char etc) associated with it.
• We cannot assign a pointer of one type to a pointer of another type.
This is called incompatibility of pointers.
• All the pointer variables store memory addresses, which are
compatible, but what is not compatible is the underlying data type to
which they point to. (way of accessing, manipulation, operation)
• We cannot use the assignment operator with the pointers of different
types. We can however make explicit assignment between
incompatible pointer types by using cast operator.

Programming Fundamentals By Priya Singh (Assistant Professor, DTU)

Void/Generic Pointer
• E.g. int x; char *p; p = (char *) & x;
• Exception: generic pointer/void pointer
• Generic/void pointer: can represent any pointer type
• All pointer types can be assigned to a void pointer and a void pointer
can be assigned to any pointer without casting.
• Syntax: void *<name-of-void-pointer>;
• E.g. void *vp;
• As void pointer is not having any object type, it can not be
dereferenced.

Programming Fundamentals By Priya Singh (Assistant Professor, DTU)