Learn C on the Mac: For OS X and iOS, Second Edition

Chapter    7

Pointers and Parameters

You’ve come a long way. You’ve mastered variable basics, operators, and statements. You’re about to add some powerful new concepts to your programming toolbox.

For starters, we’ll introduce the concept of pointers, also known as references. From now on, you’ll use pointers in almost every C program you write. (You’ve actually been using them already, it just wasn’t obvious.)

We can’t overstate this: pointers are a really important concept, and one that’s traditionally difficult to grasp at first. It’s not an exaggeration to say that pointers are what make all modern software possible. Without them, the programs you use every day would be impossible to write. Learning pointers is like going from 2D to 3D. ...