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Pointers In Pascal

The document provides an overview of pointers in Pascal, explaining their definition, usage, and importance in programming tasks such as dynamic memory allocation. It includes examples of pointer declarations, dereferencing, and the use of NIL pointers, as well as concepts like pointer arithmetic and passing pointers to subprograms. Understanding pointers is essential for becoming proficient in Pascal programming.

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12 views3 pages

Pointers In Pascal

The document provides an overview of pointers in Pascal, explaining their definition, usage, and importance in programming tasks such as dynamic memory allocation. It includes examples of pointer declarations, dereferencing, and the use of NIL pointers, as well as concepts like pointer arithmetic and passing pointers to subprograms. Understanding pointers is essential for becoming proficient in Pascal programming.

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PASCAL - POINTERS

http://www.tutorialspoint.com/pascal/pascal_pointers.htm Copyright © tutorialspoint.com

Pointers in Pascal are easy and fun to learn. Some Pascal programming tasks are performed more
easily with pointers, and other tasks, such as dynamic memory allocation, cannot be performed
without using pointers. So it becomes necessary to learn pointers to become a perfect Pascal
programmer. Let's start learning them in simple and easy steps.

As you know, every variable is a memory location and every memory location has its address
defined which can be accessed using the name of the pointer variable, which denotes an address
in memory.

What Are Pointers?


A pointer is a dynamic variable, whose value is the address of another variable, i.e., 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
ptr-identifier = ^base-variable-type;

The pointer type is defined by prefixing the up-arrow of caret symbol ^ with the base type. The
base-type defines the types of the data items. Once a pointer variable is defined to be of certain
type, it can point data items of that type only. Once a pointer type has been defined, we can use
the var declaration to declare pointer variables.

var
p1, p2, ... : ptr-identifier;

Following are some valid pointer declarations −

type
Rptr = ^real;
Cptr = ^char;
Bptr = ^ Boolean;
Aptr = ^array[1..5] of real;
date-ptr = ^ date;
Date = record
Day: 1..31;
Month: 1..12;
Year: 1900..3000;
End;
var
a, b : Rptr;
d: date-ptr;

The pointer variables are dereferenced by using the same caret symbol ^ . For example, the
associated variable referred by a pointer rptr, is rptr^. It can be accessed as −

rptr^ := 234.56;

The following example will illustrate this concept −

program exPointers;
var
number: integer;
iptr: ^integer;

begin
number := 100;
writeln('Number is: ', number);
iptr := @number;
writeln('iptr points to a value: ', iptr^);

iptr^ := 200;
writeln('Number is: ', number);
writeln('iptr points to a value: ', iptr^);
end.

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

Number is: 100


iptr points to a value: 100
Number is: 200
iptr points to a value: 200

Printing a Memory Address in Pascal


In Pascal, we can assign the address of a variable to a pointer variable using the address operator
@. We use this pointer to manipulate and access the data item. However, if for some reason, we
need to work with the memory address itself, we need to store it in a word type variable.

Let us extend the above example to print the memory address stored in the pointer iptr −

program exPointers;
var
number: integer;
iptr: ^integer;
y: ^word;

begin
number := 100;
writeln('Number is: ', number);
iptr := @number;
writeln('iptr points to a value: ', iptr^);

iptr^ := 200;
writeln('Number is: ', number);
writeln('iptr points to a value: ', iptr^);
y := addr(iptr);
writeln(y^);
end.

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

Number is: 100


iptr points to a value: 100
Number is: 200
iptr points to a value: 200
36864

NIL Pointers
It is always a good practice to assign a NIL 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 NIL points to nowhere. Consider the following program −

program exPointers;
var
number: integer;
iptr: ^integer;
y: ^word;

begin
iptr := nil;
y := addr(iptr);
writeln('the vaule of iptr is ', y^);
end.

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

The value of ptr is 0

To check for a nil pointer you can use an if statement as follows −

if(ptr <> nill )then (* succeeds if p is not null *)


if(ptr = nill)then (* succeeds if p is null *)

Pascal Pointers in Detail


Pointers have many but easy concepts and they are very important to Pascal programming. There
are following few important pointer concepts, which should be clear to a Pascal programmer −

Concept Description

There are four arithmetic operators that can be


Pascal - Pointer arithmetic used on pointers: increment,decrement, +, -

You can define arrays to hold a number of pointers.


Pascal - Array of pointers

Pascal allows you to have pointer on a pointer and


Pascal - Pointer to pointer so on.

Passing an argument by reference or by address


Passing pointers to subprograms in Pascal both enable the passed argument to be changed in
the calling subprogram by the called subprogram.

Pascal allows a subprogram to return a pointer.


Return pointer from subprograms in
Pascal

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