Declaring a pointer

Like variables, pointers have to be declared before they can be used in your program. Pointers can be named anything you want as long as they obey C's naming rules. A pointer declaration has the following form.

data_type * pointer_variable_name;

Here,

• data_type is the pointer's base type of C's variable types and indicates the type of the variable that the pointer points to.
• The asterisk (*: the same asterisk used for multiplication) which is indirection operator, declares a pointer.

Let's see some valid pointer declarations

int    *ptr_thing;            /* pointer to an integer */

int *ptr1,thing;/* ptr1 is a pointer to type integer and thing is an integer variable */

double    *ptr2;    /* pointer to a double */

float    *ptr3;      /* pointer to a float */

char    *ch1 ;       /* pointer to a character */

float  *ptr, variable;/*ptr is a pointer to type float and variable is an ordinary float variable */

Initialize a pointer

After declaring a pointer, we initialize it like standard variables with a variable address. If pointers are not uninitialized and used in the program, the results are unpredictable and potentially disastrous.

To get the address of a variable, we use the ampersand (&)operator, placed before the name of a variable whose address we need. Pointer initialization is done with the following syntax.

 pointer = &variable;

A simple program for pointer illustration is given below:

#include <stdio.h>

int main()

{

   int a=10;    //variable declaration

   int *p;      //pointer variable declaration

   p=&a;        //store address of variable a in pointer p

   printf("Address stored in a variable p is:%x\n",p);  //accessing the address

   printf("Value stored in a variable p is:%d\n",*p);   //accessing the value

   return 0;

}

Output:

Address stored in a variable p is:60ff08

Value stored in a variable p is:10

Operator	Meaning
*	Serves 2 purpose Declaration of a pointer Returns the value of the referenced variable
&	Serves only 1 purpose Returns the address of a variable