lec3:: Introduction to Pointers

Introduction to Pointers
Some C programming tasks are performed more easily with pointers and other tasks such as dynamic memory allocation cannot be performed without using pointers. So it becomes necessary to learn pointers to become a perfect C programmer.
A Pointer in C language is a variable which holds the address of another variable of same data type. Pointers are used to access memory and manipulate the address.
Before we start understanding what pointers are and what they can do, let s start by understanding what does "Address of a memory location" means.
Address in C
Whenever a variable is defined in C language a memory location is assigned for it in which its value will be stored. We can easily check this memory address using the & symbol.
If var is the name of the variable, then &var will give it s address. Let s write a small program to see memory address of any variable that we define in our program.
Concept of Pointers
Whenever a variable is declared in a program system allocates a location i.e an address to that variable in the memory to hold the assigned value. This location has its own address number which we just saw above. Let us assume that system has allocated memory location 80F for a variable a.