Declaring and Initializing Pointers
Let’s examine the process of declaring pointers. A computer needs to keep track of the type of value to which a pointer refers. For example, the address of a char
typically looks the same as the address of a double
, but char
and double
use different numbers of bytes and different internal formats for storing values. Therefore, a pointer declaration must specify what type of data to which the pointer points.
For example, the preceding example has this declaration:
int * p_updates;
This states that the combination * p_updates
is type int
. Because you use the *
operator by applying it to a pointer, the p_updates
variable itself must be a pointer. We say that p_updates
points to type int
. We also say that the type ...
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