pointers Getting started with pointers What is a Pointer?

Example

It is basically address of a variable in memory. It allows us to indirectly access a variable. So using pointers we can talk about a variable's address(as well as its value by dereferencing the pointer). They are useful when we want to deal with address of a memory location rather than its value.

Consider the following simple swap function in C:

void Swap(int firstVal, int secondVal)
{
 int tempVal = firstVal;
 firstVal = secondVal;
 secondVal = tempVal;
}

now in main if we have the following code:

.
.
int a = 9,b = 100;
swap(a,b);
//print a and b
.
.

The values of a and b would remain unchanged as would be clear by printing their values in the main function. To implement the swap function correctly, instead of passing the values of variables a and b, we pass the address of variables a and b as:

swap(&a,&b);

The operator &, returns the address of the variable. Its used like this:

int *address_of_a = &a;

the int *address_of_a, states that the variable address_of_a points to(stores the address of) an integer variable.

Now our correct swap function would be:

void Swap(int *firstaddress, int *secondaddress)
{
 int tempVal = *firstaddress;
 *firsaddress = *secondaddress;
 *secondaddress = tempVal;
}

Now the interchanged values would be reflected in main function:

int a = 9,b = 100;
swap(&a,&b);
//print

You can always dereference the pointer using *, if you dont have the original variable. Suppose if in a function you do not have the original variable but have its address in a pointer variable int *x. We can simply access the value of the memory address as value = *x;

If we did not have pointers we could never emulate pass by reference in C, because C is pass by value. But remember we can only emulate, because even when we use pointers, the int *firstaddress, int *secondaddress are only local pointer variables created, that have the address of variables a and b.