Chapter 9, Problem 1RQE

What does the indirection operator do?

Program Plan Intro

Pointer:

Pointer, the name itself references the purpose of the pointer. Pointers point to a location in memory.

• Pointer is a special type of variable to store the address of the memory location, which can be accessed later.
• If an asterisk “*” operator is present before the variable, then that variable is referred as pointer variable.
• Pointer is just a type of variable that stores the addresses of other variables.
• Using pointers, we can access the address of a variable; the data stored in that variable can be retrieved.

Syntax of pointer variable declaration:

<variable-type> *<variable-name>;

Example for pointer variable declaration:

//definition of pointer variable

int *ptrvar;

Where,

• “int” is the variable type.
• “*ptrvar” is the pointer variable name.

Explanation of Solution

Indirection operator:

An asterisk “*” is also referred as indirection operator which is used to dereferences the pointer.

Consider the following statements

//declare variable x

//assign the value 7 to y

int y = 2;

//declare pointer variable

//store the address of y in ptrvar

int *ptrvar = &y;

Here, the variable “y” is pointed by the pointer variable “ptrvar”. And “ptrvar” is used to change the value of the variable “y”.

• Hence, the user can work with the value the pointer is pointing to.