The concept of pointers is one of the most powerful fundamentals of C/C++ language.

Through pointers a developer can directly access memory from his/her code which makes memory related operations very fast. But, as always, with great power comes great responsibility. A developer has to very carefully make use of pointers in order to avoid some problems that can be nightmare to debug. In this article we will study the very basic concept of pointers with examples in C language.

What are Pointers?

Different from other normal variables which can store values, pointers are special variables that can hold the address of a variable. Since they store memory address of a variable, the pointers are very commonly said to point to variables. Lets try to understand the concept.

As shown in the above diagram:

A normal variable var has a memory address of 1001 and holds a value 50. A pointer variable has its own address 2047 but stores 1001, which is the address of the variable var

How to Declare a Pointer?

A pointer is declared as :

<pointer type> *<pointer-name>

In the above declaration : 1. pointer-type : It specifies the type of pointer. It can be int,char, float etc. This type specifies the type of variable whose address this pointer can store. 2. pointer-name : It can be any name specified by the user. Professionally, there are some coding styles which every code follows. The pointer names commonly start with p or end with ptr An example of a pointer declaration can be :

char *chptr;

In the above declaration, char signifies the pointer type, chptr is the name of the pointer while the asterisk * signifies that chptr is a pointer variable.

How to initialize a Pointer?

A pointer is initialized in the following way :

<pointer declaration(except semicolon)> = <address of a variable>

OR

<pointer declaration>

<name-of-pointer> = <address of a variable>

Note that the type of variable above should be same as the pointer type.(Though this is not a strict rule but for beginners this should be kept in mind). For example :

char ch = 'c';

char *chptr = &ch; //initialize

OR

char ch = 'c';

char *chptr;

chptr = &ch //initialize

In the code above, we declared a character variable ch which stores the value c. Now, we declared a character pointer chptr and initialized it with the address of variable ch. Note that the & operator is used to access the address of any type of variable.

How to Use a Pointer?

A pointer can be used in two contexts. Context 1: For accessing the address of the variable whose memory address the pointer stores. Again consider the following code :

char ch = 'c';

char *chptr = &ch;

Now, whenever we refer the name chptr in the code after the above two lines, then compiler would try to fetch the value contained by this pointer variable, which is the address of the variable (ch) to which the pointer points. i.e. the value given by chptr would be equal to &ch. For example :

char *ptr = chptr;

The value held by chptr (which in this case is the address of the variable ch) is assigned to the new pointer ptr. Context 2: For accessing the value of the variable whose memory address the pointer stores. Continuing with the piece of code used above :

char ch = 'c';

char t;

char *chptr = &ch;

t = *chptr;

We see that in the last line above, we have used * before the name of the pointer. What does this asterisk operator do? Well, this operator when applied to a pointer variable name(like in the last line above) yields the value of the variable to which this pointer points. Which means, in this case *chptr would yield the value kept at address held by chptr. Since chptr holds the address of variable ch and value of ch is c, so *chptr yeilds c. When used with pointers, the asterisk * operator is also known as value of operator.

An Example of C Pointers
Consider the following code : CODE :

#include <stdio.h>

int main(void)

char ch = 'c';

char *chptr = &ch;

int i = 20;

int *intptr = &i;

float f = 1.20000;

float *fptr = &f;

char *ptr = "I am a string";

printf("\n [%c], [%d], [%f], [%c], [%s]\n", *chptr, *intptr, *fptr, *ptr, ptr);

return 0;

OUTPUT :

$ ./pointers

[c], [20], [1.200000], [I], [I am a string]

To debug a C program, use gdb. The above code covers all the common pointers. The first three of them are very trivial now to understand so lets concentrate on the fourth one. In the fourth example, a character pointer points to a string. In C, a string is nothing but an array of characters. So we have no staring pointers in C. Its the character pointers that are used in case of strings too. Now, coming to the string, when we point a pointer to a string, by default it holds the address of the first character of the string. Lets try to understand it better. The string, I am String in memory is placed as :

1001

1002

1003

1004

1005

1006

1007

1008

1009

1010

\0

Since characters occupy one byte each, so they are placed like above in the memory. Note the last character, its a null character which is placed at the end of every string by default in C. This null character signifies the end of the string. Now coming back to the point, any character pointer pointing to a string stores the address of the first character of the string. In the code above, ptr holds the address of the character I ie 1001. Now, when we apply the value of operator * to ptr, we intend to fetch the value at address 1001 which is I and hence when we print *ptr, we get I as the output. Also, If we specify the format specifier as %s and use ptr (which contains the starting address of the string), then the complete string is printed using printf. The concept is that %s specifier requires the address of the beginning byte of string to display the complete string, which we provided using ptr (which we know holds the beginning byte address of the string). This we can see as the last print in the output above.

Pointers as Structure Objects

Consider the following code : CODE:

#include<stdio.h>

struct st{

int a;

char ch;

};

int main(void)

struct st obj;

struct st *stobj = &obj;

stobj->a = 5;

stobj->ch = 'a';

printf("\n [%d] [%c]\n", stobj->a, stobj->ch);

return 0;

OUTPUT:

$ ./pointers

[5] [a]

In the above code, we have declared a pointer stobj of type struct st. Now since the pointer type is a structure, so the address it points to has to be of a struct st type variable(which in this case is obj). Other interesting part is how structure elements are accessed using pointer variable stobj. Yes, When dealing with pointer objects, its a standard to use arrow operator -> instead of . operator(which would have been used, had we used obj to access the structure elements). To conclude, In this article we studied the concept of pointers in C from scratch and then slowly built upon our understanding to more complex topics like using pointers as structure objects. This was a basic tutorial, we will cover more complex pointer concepts in the part-II of this article. (Part 2: Advanced C pointers).

In C programming language, the concept of pointers is the most powerful concept that makes C stand apart from other programming languages. In the part-I of this series we discussed thefundamental concepts around C pointers. In this article, we will try to develop understanding of some of the relatively complex concepts. The following are explained in this article with examples: 1. Constant pointer and pointer to constant. 2. Pointer to pointer with an example 3. Array of pointers with an example 4. Pointer to functions with an example

1. C Constant Pointer and Pointer to Constant

As a developer, you should understand the difference between constant pointer and pointer to constant.

C Constant pointer
A pointer is said to be constant pointer when the address its pointing to cannot be changed. Lets take an example :

char ch, c;

char *ptr = &ch

ptr = &c

In the above example we defined two characters (ch and c) and a character pointer ptr. First, the pointer ptr contained the address of ch and in the next line it contained the address of c. In other words, we can say that Initially ptr pointed to ch and then it pointed to c. But in case of a constant pointer, once a pointer holds an address, it cannot change it. This means a constant pointer, if already pointing to an address, cannot point to a new address. If we see the example above, then if ptr would have been a constant pointer, then the third line would have not been valid. A constant pointer is declared as :

<type-of-pointer> *const <name-of-pointer>

For example :

#include<stdio.h>

int main(void)

char ch = 'c';

char c = 'a';

char *const ptr = &ch; // A constant pointer

ptr = &c; // Trying to assign new address to a constant pointer. WRONG!!!!

return 0;

When the code above is compiled, compiler gives the following error :

$ gcc -Wall constptr.c -o constptr

constptr.c: In function main:

constptr.c:9: error: assignment of read-only variable ptr

So we see that, as expected, compiler throws an error since we tried to change the address held by constant pointer. Now, we should be clear with this concept. Lets move on.

C Pointer to Constant
This concept is easy to understand as the name simplifies the concept. Yes, as the name itself suggests, this type of pointer cannot change the value at the address pointed by it. Lets understand this through an example :

char ch = 'c';

char *ptr = &ch

*ptr = 'a';

In the above example, we used a character pointer ptr that points to character ch. In the last line, we change the value at address pointer by ptr. But if this would have been a pointer to a constant, then the last line would have been invalid because a pointer to a constant cannot change the value at the address its pointing to. A pointer to a constant is declared as :

const <type-of-pointer> *<name-of-pointer>;

For example :

#include<stdio.h>

int main(void)

char ch = 'c';

const char *ptr = &ch; // A constant pointer 'ptr' pointing to 'ch'

*ptr = 'a';// WRONG!!! Cannot change the value at address pointed by 'ptr'.

return 0;

When the above code was compiled, compiler gave the following error :

$ gcc -Wall ptr2const.c -o ptr2const

ptr2const.c: In function main:

ptr2const.c:7: error: assignment of read-only location *ptr

So now we know the reason behind the error above ie we cannot change the value pointed to by a constant pointer.

2. C Pointer to Pointer
Till now we have used or learned pointer to a data type like character, integer etc. But in this section we will learn about pointers pointing to pointers. As the definition of pointer says that its a special variable that can store the address of an other variable. Then the other variable can very well be a pointer. This means that its perfectly legal for a pointer to be pointing to another pointer. Lets suppose we have a pointer p1 that points to yet another pointer p2 that points to a character ch. In memory, the three variables can be visualized as :

So we can see that in memory, pointer p1 holds the address of pointer p2. Pointer p2 holds the address of character ch. So p2 is pointer to character ch, while p1 is pointer to p2 or we can also say that p2 is a pointer to pointer to character ch. Now, in code p2 can be declared as :

char *p2 = &ch;

But p1 is declared as :

char **p1 = &p2;

So we see that p1 is a double pointer (ie pointer to a pointer to a character) and hence the two *s in declaration. Now,

p1 is the address of p2 ie 5000 *p1 is the value held by p2 ie 8000 **p1 is the value at 8000 ie c

I think that should pretty much clear the concept, lets take a small example :

#include<stdio.h>

int main(void)

char **ptr = NULL;

char *p = NULL;

char c = 'd';

p = &c;

ptr = &p;

printf("\n c = [%c]\n",c);

printf("\n *p = [%c]\n",*p);

printf("\n **ptr = [%c]\n",**ptr);

return 0;

Here is the output :

$ ./doubleptr

c = [d]

*p = [d]

**ptr = [d]

3. C Array of Pointers
Just like array of integers or characters, there can be array of pointers too. An array of pointers can be declared as :

<type> *<name>[<number-of-elements];

For example :

char *ptr[3];

The above line declares an array of three character pointers. Lets take a working example :

#include<stdio.h>

int main(void)

char *p1 = "Himanshu";

char *p2 = "Arora";

char *p3 = "India";

char *arr[3];

arr[0] = p1;

arr[1] = p2;

arr[2] = p3;

printf("\n p1 = [%s] \n",p1);

printf("\n p2 = [%s] \n",p2);

printf("\n p3 = [%s] \n",p3);

printf("\n arr[0] = [%s] \n",arr[0]);

printf("\n arr[1] = [%s] \n",arr[1]);

printf("\n arr[2] = [%s] \n",arr[2]);

return 0;

In the above code, we took three pointers pointing to three strings. Then we declared an array that can contain three pointers. We assigned the pointers p1, p2 and p3 to the 0,1 and 2 index of array. Lets see the output :

$ ./arrayofptr

p1 = [Himanshu]

p2 = [Arora]

p3 = [India]

arr[0] = [Himanshu]

arr[1] = [Arora]

arr[2] = [India]

So we see that array now holds the address of strings.

4. C Function Pointers
Just like pointer to characters, integers etc, we can have pointers to functions. A function pointer can be declared as :

<return type of function> (*<name of pointer>) (type of function arguments)

For example :

int (*fptr)(int, int)

The above line declares a function pointer fptr that can point to a function whose return type is int and takes two integers as arguments. Lets take a working example :

#include<stdio.h>

int func (int a, int b)

printf("\n a = %d\n",a);

printf("\n b = %d\n",b);

return 0;

int main(void)

int(*fptr)(int,int); // Function pointer

fptr = func; // Assign address to function pointer

func(2,3);

fptr(2,3);

return 0;

In the above example, we defined a function func that takes two integers as inputs and returns an integer. In the main() function, we declare a function pointer fptr and then assign value to it. Note that, name of the function can be treated as starting address of the function so we can assign the address of function to function pointer using functions name. Lets see the output :

$ ./fptr

a = 2

b = 3

a = 2

b = 3

So from the output we see that calling the function through function pointer produces the same output as calling the function from its name. To conclude, in this article we touched some of the advanced concepts related to pointers. There can be some interesting problems related to pointers, which we might cover in some future article.

Linked list is one of the fundamental data structures in C.

Knowledge of linked lists is must for C programmers. This article explains the fundamentals of C linked list with an example C program. Linked list is a dynamic data structure whose length can be increased or decreased at run time. How Linked lists are different from arrays? Consider the following points :

An array is a static data structure. This means the length of array cannot be altered at run time. While, a linked list is a dynamic data structure. In an array, all the elements are kept at consecutive memory locations while in a linked list the elements (or nodes) may be kept at any location but still connected to each other.

When to prefer linked lists over arrays? Linked lists are preferred mostly when you dont know the volume of data to be stored. For example, In an employee management system, one cannot use arrays as they are of fixed length while any number of new employees can join. In scenarios like these, linked lists (or other dynamic data structures) are used as their capacity can be increased (or decreased) at run time (as an when required).

How linked lists are arranged in memory?

Linked list basically consists of memory blocks that are located at random memory locations. Now, one would ask how are they connected or how they can be traversed? Well, they are connected through pointers. Usually a block in a linked list is represented through a structure like this :

struct test_struct

int val;

struct test_struct *next;

};

So as you can see here, this structure contains a value val and a pointer to a structure of same type. The value val can be any value (depending upon the data that the linked list is holding) while the pointer next contains the address of next block of this linked list. So linked list traversal is made possible through these next pointers that contain address of the next node. The next pointer of the last node (or for a single node linked list) would contain a NULL.

How a node is created?

A node is created by allocating memory to a structure (as shown in above point) in the following way :

struct test_struct *ptr = (struct test_struct*)malloc(sizeof(struct test_struct));

So, as we can see above, the pointer ptr now contains address of a newly created node. If the linked list is empty and first node is created then it is also known as head node. Once a node is created, then it can be assigned the value (that it is created to hold) and its next pointer is assigned the address of next node. If no next node exists (or if its the last node) then as already discussed, a NULL is assigned. This can be done in following way :

...

...

ptr->val = val;

ptr->next = NULL;

...

...

How to search a node in a linked list?

Searching a node means finding the node that contains the value being searched. This is in fact a very simple task if we talk about linear search (Note that there can be many search algorithms). One just needs to start with the first node and then compare the value which is being searched with the value contained in this node. If the value does not match then through the next pointer (which contains the address of next node) the next node is accessed and same value comparison is done there. The search goes on until last node is accessed or node is found whose value is equal to the value being searched. A code snippet for this may look like :

...

...

...

while(ptr != NULL)

if(ptr->val == val)

found = true;

break;

else

ptr = ptr->next;

...

...

...

How a node is deleted?

A node is deleted by first finding it in the linked list and then calling free() on the pointer containing its address. If the deleted node is any node other than the first and last node then the next pointer of the node previous to the deleted node needs to be pointed to the address of the node that is just after the deleted node. Its just like if a person breaks away from a human chain

then the two persons (between whom the person was) needs to join hand together to maintain the chain.

A Practical C Linked List Example

Here is a practical example that creates a linked list, adds some nodes to it, searches and deletes nodes from it.

#include<stdio.h>

#include<stdlib.h>

#include<stdbool.h>

struct test_struct

int val;

struct test_struct *next;

};

struct test_struct *head = NULL;

struct test_struct *curr = NULL;

struct test_struct* create_list(int val)

printf("\n creating list with headnode as [%d]\n",val);

struct test_struct *ptr = (struct test_struct*)malloc(sizeof(struct test_struct));

if(NULL == ptr)

printf("\n Node creation failed \n");

return NULL;

ptr->val = val;

ptr->next = NULL;

head = curr = ptr;

return ptr;

struct test_struct* add_to_list(int val, bool add_to_end)

if(NULL == head)

return (create_list(val));

if(add_to_end)

printf("\n Adding node to end of list with value [%d]\n",val);

else

printf("\n Adding node to beginning of list with value [%d]\n",val);

struct test_struct *ptr = (struct test_struct*)malloc(sizeof(struct test_struct));

if(NULL == ptr)

printf("\n Node creation failed \n");

return NULL;

ptr->val = val;

ptr->next = NULL;

if(add_to_end)

curr->next = ptr;

curr = ptr;

else

ptr->next = head;

head = ptr;

return ptr;

struct test_struct* search_in_list(int val, struct test_struct **prev)

struct test_struct *ptr = head;

struct test_struct *tmp = NULL;

bool found = false;

printf("\n Searching the list for value [%d] \n",val);

while(ptr != NULL)

if(ptr->val == val)

found = true;

break;

else

tmp = ptr;

ptr = ptr->next;

if(true == found)

if(prev)

*prev = tmp;

return ptr;

else

return NULL;

int delete_from_list(int val)

struct test_struct *prev = NULL;

struct test_struct *del = NULL;

printf("\n Deleting value [%d] from list\n",val);

del = search_in_list(val,&prev);

if(del == NULL)

return -1;

else

if(prev != NULL)

prev->next = del->next;

if(del == curr)

curr = prev;

else if(del == head)

head = del->next;

free(del);

del = NULL;

return 0;

void print_list(void)

struct test_struct *ptr = head;

printf("\n -------Printing list Start------- \n");

while(ptr != NULL)

printf("\n [%d] \n",ptr->val);

ptr = ptr->next;

printf("\n -------Printing list End------- \n");

return;

int main(void)

int i = 0, ret = 0;

struct test_struct *ptr = NULL;

print_list();

for(i = 5; i<10; i++)

add_to_list(i,true);

print_list();

for(i = 4; i>0; i--)

add_to_list(i,false);

print_list();

for(i = 1; i<10; i += 4)

ptr = search_in_list(i, NULL);

if(NULL == ptr)

printf("\n Search [val = %d] failed, no such element found\n",i);

else

printf("\n Search passed [val = %d]\n",ptr->val);

print_list();

ret = delete_from_list(i);

if(ret != 0)

printf("\n delete [val = %d] failed, no such element found\n",i);

else

printf("\n delete [val = %d]

passed \n",i);

print_list();

return 0;

In the code above :

The first node is always made accessible through a global head pointer. This pointer is adjusted when first node is deleted. Similarly there is a curr pointer that contains the last node in the list. This is also adjusted when last node is deleted. Whenever a node is added to linked list, it is always checked if the linked list is empty then add it as the first node.

Also, as you see from the above Linked list example, it also uses pointers. If you are new to C programming, you should understand the fundamentals of C pointers. The output of the above code looks like :

$ ./ll

-------Printing list Start-------

-------Printing list End-------

creating list with headnode as [5]

Adding node to end of list with value [6]

Adding node to end of list with value [7]

Adding node to end of list with value [8]

Adding node to end of list with value [9]

-------Printing list Start-------

[5]

[6]

[7]

[8]

[9]

-------Printing list End-------

Adding node to beginning of list with value [4]

Adding node to beginning of list with value [3]

Adding node to beginning of list with value [2]

Adding node to beginning of list with value [1]

-------Printing list Start-------

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]

[6]

[7]

[8]

[9]

-------Printing list End-------

Searching the list for value [1]

Search passed [val = 1]

-------Printing list Start-------

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]

[6]

[7]

[8]

[9]

-------Printing list End-------

Deleting value [1] from list

Searching the list for value [1]

delete [val = 1]

passed

-------Printing list Start-------

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]

[6]

[7]

[8]

[9]

-------Printing list End-------

Searching the list for value [5]

Search passed [val = 5]

-------Printing list Start-------

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]

[6]

[7]

[8]

[9]

-------Printing list End-------

Deleting value [5] from list

Searching the list for value [5]

delete [val = 5]

passed

-------Printing list Start-------

[2]

[3]

[4]

[6]

[7]

[8]

[9]

-------Printing list End-------

Searching the list for value [9]

Search passed [val = 9]

-------Printing list Start-------

[2]

[3]

[4]

[6]

[7]

[8]

[9]

-------Printing list End-------

Deleting value [9] from list

Searching the list for value [9]

delete [val = 9]

passed

-------Printing list Start-------

[2]

[3]

[4]

[6]

[7]

[8]

-------Printing list End-------

As you see from the above output, it does all the fundamental Linked list operations. It creates a linked list, adds some nodes to it, searches and deletes nodes from it.