Pointer In C Programming Language

Pointer In C Programming Language

In this post, We will learn about pointer in C programming language.

Introduction

Pointers in C programming language is a variable that stores the memory address of another variable. A pointer in C is used to allocate memory dynamically i.e. at runtime. The pointer variable might be belonging to any of the data types such as int, float, char, double, short etc.

Important Points About Pointer in C:

• Pointer stores the address of a variable whereas a normal variable stores the value.  
• The content of the C pointer always be a whole number i.e. address.
• Default C pointer is initialized to null, i.e. int *p = null.
• The value of the null pointer is 0.
• & symbol is used to get the address of the variable.
• * symbol is used to get the value of the variable that the pointer is pointing to.
• If a pointer in C is assigned to NULL, it means it is pointing to nothing.
• Two pointers can be subtracted to know how many elements are available between these two pointers.
• But, Pointer addition, multiplication, division are not allowed.
• The size of any pointer is 2 byte (for a 16-bit compiler).

Example

 #include <stdio.h>  
 int main()  
 {  
   int *ptr, var;  
   var = 50;  
   /* address of var is assigned to ptr */  
   ptr = &var;  
   /* display var's value using ptr variable */  
   printf("%d", *ptr);  
   return 0;  
 }  

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