What do pointers do in c

And, the address of c is assigned to the pc pointer. For example:. Here, the address of c is assigned to the pc pointer. It operates on a pointer and gives the value stored in that pointer. Then, we changed the value of c to 1. Since pc and the address of c is the same, c will be equal to 1. Now you know what pointers are, you will learn how pointers are related to arrays in the next tutorial. Course Index Explore Programiz. Popular Tutorials Data Types in C.

C for Loop. Arrays in C Programming. Pointers in C. Find roots of a quadratic equation. Print Pyramids and Patterns. Check prime number.

Collectives on Stack Overflow. Learn more. How do pointer-to-pointer's work in C? Ask Question. Asked 12 years, 5 months ago. Active 11 months ago. Viewed k times. How do pointers-to-pointers work in C?

When might you use them? Improve this question. Rob Bednark No not homework And if the caller doesnt want to allocate the memory the called function will allocate the memory — resultsway. You have a nice example of "pointer to pointer" usage in Git 2. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. As to why one uses pointers to pointers: The name of an array usually yields the address of its first element.

Even though an array of strings sounds one-dimensional, it is in fact two-dimensional, since strings are character arrays. Many other reasons that are too numerous to list here. Improve this answer. Joseph Nields 5, 2 2 gold badges 27 27 silver badges 44 44 bronze badges. Stephan Stephan If you're programming C, and don't have this book and are cool with paper documentation, I highly suggest you get it, the fairly modest expense will pay for itself very quickly in productivity.

It tends to be very clear in its examples. Also it's at most misleading to say that "an array is stored as the address of the first element". An array is stored as Often its name yields a pointer to its first element, but not always. About pointers to pointers, I would simply say that they are useful when a function has to modify a pointer passed as a parameter then you pass a pointer to the pointer instead. Unless I'm misinterpreting this answer, it looks wrong.

Looks good. Than minor issue was all that was stopping me from saying: Great post. The explaination itself was excellent. Changing to an up-vote. Perhaps stackoverflow needs to review pointers? Show 7 more comments. How do pointers to pointers work in C? When would you use them? Why it's dangerous? Rob 47k 4 4 gold badges 71 71 silver badges 91 91 bronze badges. Brian R. Bondy Brian R. Bondy k gold badges silver badges bronze badges. When we come across an entry we want removed line 5 , we assign the value of current next pointer to the previous one, thus eliminating the current element line 7.

VonC VonC 1. This will help to understand better - grisha. This video was essential for me in understanding your example. We can manipulate strings using pointers. This pointer in C example explains this section. Skip to content. What is Pointer in C? What You Will Learn. Types of Pointers in C Following are the different Types of Pointers in C : Null Pointer We can create a null pointer by assigning null value during the pointer declaration. Report a Bug. Previous Prev. Next Continue.

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