Programming in C, Fourth Edition

10. Pointers

In this chapter, you examine one of the most sophisticated features of the C programming language: pointers. In fact, the power and flexibility that C provides in dealing with pointers serve to set it apart from many other programming languages. Pointers enable you to effectively represent complex data structures, to change values passed as arguments to functions, to work with memory that has been allocated “dynamically” (see Chapter 16, “Miscellaneous and Advanced Features”), and to more concisely and efficiently deal with arrays.

As you become a more proficient C programmer, you will find yourself using pointers in all aspects of the development process, so this chapter covers a wide range of ways to implement and use pointers ...