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Pointers Pointers are variables that contain memory addresses as their values. A variable directly contains a specific value. A pointer contains an address.

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Presentation on theme: "Pointers Pointers are variables that contain memory addresses as their values. A variable directly contains a specific value. A pointer contains an address."— Presentation transcript:

1 Pointers Pointers are variables that contain memory addresses as their values. A variable directly contains a specific value. A pointer contains an address of a variable that contains a specific value. A variable name directly references a value. A pointer indirectly references a value. Referencing a value through a pointer is called indirection.

2 Directly and Indirectly referencing a variable sum sumPtr sum 5 5 sum directly references a variable whose value is 5 sumPtr indirectly references a variable whose value is 5

3 Initialization A pointer may be initialized to 0, NULL or an address. NULL is a symbolic constant defined in A pointer with the value NULL points to nothing. The only integer that can be assigned to a pointer is 0. Dereferencing The * operator – indirection or dereferencing operator, returns the value of the object that its operand points to in memory. This is called dereferencing the pointer.

4 /* Program to display the address and value of a pointer */ #include int main() { int a; int *aPtr; a = 200; aPtr = &a; printf(“The address of a is %p \n”, &a); printf(“The value of aPtr is %p \n”, aPtr); printf(“The value of a is %d \n”, a); printf(“The value of *aPtr is %d \n”, *aPtr); }

5 Calling functions by reference #include void cubebyref( int *); int main() { int num = 5; printf(“The number is %d \n”,num); cubeByRef(&num); printf(“The new value of number is %d \n”,num); return 0; } void cubeByRef(int *numPtr) { *numPtr = *nPtr * *nPtr * *nPtr ; }

6 Relationship between Pointers and Arrays An array name is the address of the first element of an array. int b[5]; The address of the first element : using %p to print - b, &b[0], &b. Assume that int b[5] and pointer variable bPtr have been declared. Since the array name is a pointer to the first element of the array: bPtr = b; This is equivalent to bPtr = &b[0]; Array element b[1] can be referenced by: *( bPtr + 1) 1 is the offset to the pointer. The preceding notation is called pointer / offset notation.

7 In pointer/offset notation, the offset is the same as the array subscript. Pointers can be subscripted exactly as arrays can. bPtr[1] refers to the array element b[1]. This is called pointer / subscript notation.

8 #include int main() { int b[] = { 10, 20, 30, 40 }; int *bPtr = b; int i, offset; printf(“Pointer/offset notation where the pointer is ”); printf(“the array name \n”); for(offset = 0; offset < 4; offset++) printf(“*(b + %d) = %d \n”, offset, *( b + offset) ); printf(“Pointer/subscript notation \n”); for( i = 0 ; i < 4 ; i++) printf(“bPtr[ %d ] = %d \n”, i, bPtr [i ]); printf(“pointer/offset notation \n”); for (offset = 0; offset < 4 ; offset ++) printf(“ *(bPtr + %d) = %d \n”, offset,*(bPtr + offset)); return 0; }

9 #include void copy( char *, const char *); int main() { char string1[10], *string2 = “CS230”; char string3[10], string4[ ] = “Lab”; copy(string1, string2); printf(“string1 = %s \n”,string1); copy(string3,string4); printf(“string3 = %s \n”,string3); return 0; }

10 void copy(char *s1, const char *s2) { int i = 0; do { s1[i] = s2[i]; i++; } while (s2[i] != ‘\0’); s1[i] = ‘\0’; }


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