Pointers in C Language

What is pointer

Pointer is the flavor of C Language. It’s a special type of variable that can hold the address of same type of variable. So we can say that variables deals with value while pointers deals with address in C Language.

Consider the following declaration:-

int i =50;

This declaration tells the C compiler to-

Reserve space in memory to store an integer value

Associate the name i  with the memory location

store the value 5 at this location

This feature can be demonstrate with the help of a chart

 Location Name     i

 Value                    50

Address                1000

In C Language, &is called address operator while * is called value at address  or indirection operator.

C program to illustrate the use of pointer

#include< stdio.h >

 void main()

 {

  int i=5;

  printf("\nValue stored is=%d",i);

  printf("\nAddress of the location is=%u",&i);

  printf("\nValue stored is=%d",*(&i));

  }

From the above program it is clear that &i returns the address of i.So, this address can be stored in a variable and address of a variable can be stored in pointer.

The above C  program on pointeris modified as follows:-

#include< stdio.h >

 void main()

 {

  int i=5;

  int *j;

  j=&i;

  printf("\nvalue stored in the pointer(address of the variable'i')is=%u",j);

  printf("\nAddress of the location (through address operator)is=%u",&i);

  printf("\nValue stored (displayed through pointer)is=%d",*j);

  printf("\nValue stored (displayed through variable)is=%d",i);

  printf("\nAddress of the pointer is=%u",&j);

  }