Pointers

Pointers:

• A variable which holds the address of the another variable is known as pointer.
• pointer points to existing variable.

Pointer Declaration:

•  Now  we store address of the variable into another variable so that another variable should be a special variable that special variable name is pointer variable.
•  To declare a pointer we use * (indirection operator)

Syntax: Datatype  *pointer-name;

Example:           int  *P;
from the example we noticed that p is pointer to integer datatype and p contains the address of variable which is integer variable.

Initialization: 

• Here we assign the address of a variable to a pointer variable and this can be done by using &sign.
• Here  (&) is an address operator used to access the address of a variable and assign it to a pointer to initialize it. 

Consider  an example of pointer initialization:
                            int  i=10;
                            int  *P;
                            P=&i;
This can be shown as :

here  p is 2000
  *p is 10
&p  is 1998 

•  we  have to observe that we cannot assign the address of a float variable into integer pointer.

                          float x;

                          int *P;

                          p=&x;  /*error*/

          /*sample program on pointer concept*/           

    Uses of pointers:

• Pointers are used to save memory space.
• pointers allows  'c'  to support dynamic memory management.
• pointers reduce complexity and length of a program. 

You can also refer

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•   Pass by Reference
•   Data Types
•   First C program
•   Functions
•   Structures