I am new to C and i have this question. why does the following code crash:
int *a = 10;
*a = 100;
Because you are trying to write 100 to the memory location 0x0000000A which is probably not allocated to your program. That is,
int *a = 10;
does not mean that the pointer 'a' will point to a location in memory having the value of 10. It means it is pointing to address 10 (0x0000000A) in the memory. Then, you want to write something into that address, but you don't have the "rights" to do so, since it is not allocated
You can try the following:
int *a = malloc(sizeof(int));
*a = 100;
This would work, although horribly inefficient. If you only need a single int, you should just put it into the stack, not the heap. On a 32-bit architecure, a pointer is 32 bits long, and an int is 32 bits long too, so your pointer-to-an-int structure takes up (at least) 8 bytes of memory space this way instead of 4. And we haven't even mentioned caching issues.
You need to assign the pointer to a memory location, not arbitrary value (10).
int cell = 10;
int *a = &cell; // a points to address of cell
*a = 100; // content of cell changed
See my answer to another question, about being careful with C.
I would like to propose a slight change in the use of malloc(), for all the answers that suggest using it to allocate memory for the int. Instead of:
a = malloc(sizeof(int));
I would suggest not repeating the type of the variable, since that is known by the compiler and repeating it manually both makes the code more dense, and introduces an error risk. If you later change the declaration to e.g.
long *a;
Without changing the allocation, you would end up allocating the wrong amount of memory ( in the general case, on 32-bit machines int and long are often the same size). It's, IMO, better to use:
a = malloc(sizeof *a);
This simply means "the size of the type pointed at by a", in this case int, which is of course exactly right. If you change the type in the declaration as above, this line is still correct. There is still a risk, if you change the name of the variable on the left hand side of the assignment, but at least you no longer repeat information needlessly.
Also note that no parenthesis are needed with sizeof when using it on actual objects (i.e. variables), only with type names, which look like cast expressions. sizeof is not a function, it's an operator.
Because you've never allocated any memory for a. You've just allocated some stack space for a pointer to a.
int *a = NULL;
a = malloc (sizeof (int));
if (a != NULL)
{
*a =10;
}
Will work.
Alternatively you could give a the address of some existing variable, which would work as well.
i.e.
int a* = NULL;
int b = 10;
a = &b;
This will now mean that doing something like
*a = 100;
will also set b to be == 100
Check out this:
http://home.netcom.com/~tjensen/ptr/pointers.pdf
The following line,
int *a = 10;
defines a pointer to an integer a. You then point the pointer a to the memory location 10.
The next line,
*a = 100;
Puts the value 100 in the memory location pointed to by a.
The problem is:
You don't know where a points to. (You don't know the value of memory location 10)
Wherever a points to, you probably have no right changing that value. It's probably some other program/process's memory. You thief!
Because You declare a pointer to int, initialize the pointer to 10 (an address) and then try to assign a value to an int at this address. Since the memory at address 10 does not belong to your process, You get a crash. This should work:
int *a;
a = malloc(sizeof(int));
*a = 10;
printf("a=%i\n", *a);
free(a);
Does this code even compile? 10 isn't convertible to an int *, unless you cast it like so:
int *a = (int *) 10;
*a = 100;
In that case, you're trying to write 100 into the memory address at 10. This isn't usually a valid memory address, hence your program crashes.
It's probably crashing because you are assigning the pointer to some part of memory which you don't have access to and then you're assigning some value to that memory location (which you're not allowed to do!).
You could also write it as:
int* a = 10;
*a = 100;
Note the different spacing on the first line. It's not a popular style, but I personally think it's clearer. It has exactly the same meaning to the compiler.
Then, read it out loud:
"Pointer-to-int 'a' becomes 10"
"Value-pointed-to-by 'a' becomes 100"
Substituting the actual value:
"Value-pointed-to-by 10 becomes 100"
... at which you realise that 10 is unlikely to point to a piece of memory you can use.
You would pretty much never assign to a pointer with a literal:
int* ptr = (int*)10; // You've guessed at a memory address, and probably got it wrong
int* ptr = malloc(sizeof(int)); // OS gives you a memory address at runtime
I guess there might be some very low level jobs where you directly specify absolute memory addresses. Kernel implementation for example?
Okay, trying to give the simplest explanation today, while trying to give you more detailed picture about it all. Lets add some parentheses shall we?
(int*) a = 10;
(*a) = 100;
You attempt to write four bytes into the address-range [10-13]. The memory layout of your program starts usually higher, so your application does not accidentally overwrite anything from where it could and still function (from .data, .bss, and stack for instance). So it just ends up crashing instead, because the address-range has not been allocated.
Pointer points to a memory location and C static typing defines a type for a pointer. Though you can override the pointer easily. Simply:
(void*) v = NULL;
Here we go further to things. What is a null pointer? It's simply pointer that points to address 0.
You can also give a struct type for your pointer:
struct Hello {
int id;
char* name;
};
...
struct Hello* hello_ptr = malloc(sizeof Hello);
hello_ptr->id = 5;
hello_ptr->name = "Cheery";
Ok, what is malloc? Malloc allocates memory and returns a pointer to the allocated memory. It has a following type signature:
void* malloc(size_t size);
If you do not have a conservative garbage collector, it is likely that your memory won't end up being freed automatically. Therefore, if you want to get the memory back into use from what you just allocated, you must do:
free(hello_ptr);
Each malloc you do has a size-tag in it, so you do not need to state the size of the chunk you pointed for free -routine.
Ok, yet one thing, what does a character string look like in memory? The one similar to "Cheery" for instance. Simple answer. It's a zero-terminated array of bytes.
0.1.2.3.4.5. 6
C h e e r y \0
Related
According to the answer from my faculty malloc dynamically allocates memory, Then why the output shows the same size allocated to both normal variable and malloc();. I am a newbie to programming, so I guess you would answer my question the way that a newbie can understand.
#include<stdio.h>
int main()
{
int a,b;
a = (int *) malloc(sizeof(int)*2);
printf("The size of a is:%d \n",sizeof(a));
printf("The size of b is:%d \n",sizeof(b));
return 0;
}
Output:
The size of a is:4
The size of b is:4
Malloc is used on a pointer. You are declaring an integer int a. This needs to be changed to int *a
The sizeof() operator will not give the no of bytes allocated by malloc. This needs to be maintained by the programmer and typically cannot be determined directly from the pointer.
For int *a, sizeof(a) will always return the size of the pointer,
int *a;
printf("%zu\n",sizeof(a)); // gives the size of the pointer e.g. 4
a = malloc(100 * sizeof(int));
printf("%zu\n",sizeof(a)); // also gives the size of the pointer e.g. 4
You should always remember to free the memory you have allocated with malloc
free(a);
Edit The printf format specifiers should be %zu for a sizeof() output. See comments below.
You declare and define both variables as int. Nothing else has an influence on the value of sizeof().
int a,b;
This assigns a value to one of those ints which which is very special, but it does not change anything about the fact that a remains an int (and your cast is misleading and does not do anything at all, even less to change anything about a).
a = (int *) malloc(sizeof(int)*2);
In order to change above line to something sensible (i.e. a meaningful use of malloc) it should be like this:
int* a;
a= malloc(sizeof(int)*2);
I.e. a is now a pointer to int and gets the address of an area which can store two ints. No cast needed.
That way, sizeof(a) (on many machines) will still be 4, which is often the size of a pointer. The size of what it is pointing to is irrelevant.
The actual reason for using malloc() is determined by the goal of the larger scope of the program it is used for. That is not visible in this artificially short example. Work through some pointer-related tutorials. Looking for "linked list" or "binary tree" will get you on the right track.
What programs which meaningfully use malloc have in common is that they are dealing with data structures which are not known at compile time and can change during runtime. The unknown attributes could simply be the total size, but especially in the case of trees, the larger structure is usually unknown, too.
There is an interesting aspect to note when using malloc():
Do I cast the result of malloc?
I'm struggling to understand how pointers work.
The way I got it is that, when I declare a pointer to, say, int, I create both a variable that'll contain an address (that must be initialized to even operate on the int) and an int variable. Visually, I'd represent this this way (address;int). For example, if I declared
int* number;
I'd have "number" being the address variable and "*number" being the int variable.
Likewise, declaring something such as int** d should mean to create a pointer to (address;int). That'd be [address;(address;int)].
With this in mind, I was trying to modify the int value of **d by using an external function, incrementer_3, and this so called pass by reference, but I get an error on runtime. So, I was wondering what I'm missing.
#include <stdio.h>
void incrementer(int* a) {
(*a)++;
}
void incrementer_2(int** a) {
(**a)++;
}
void incrementer_3(int*** a) {
(***a)++;
}
int main() {
int b = 7;
incrementer(&b);
printf("%d\n", b);
int* c = (int*)malloc(sizeof(int));
*c = 4;
incrementer_2(&c);
printf("%d\n", *c);
int** d = (int**)malloc(sizeof(int*));
**d = 6;
incrementer_3(&d);
printf("%d\n", **d);
system("pause");
}
FYI the part when I increase b and c works fine.
On a side note, I was also wondering if it's possible to modify the value of *c by using the function "incrementer" and not "incrementer_2". In fact I was just thinking that I could have simply written from main
incrementer(&(*c));
or, in a simpler way
incrementer(c);
but none of them work on runtime.
You need to keep in mind that a pointer need not actually refer to anything, and even if it does refer to something that something need not be valid. Keeping track of those things is your job as a programmer.
By convention an invalid pointer will be given the value 0 (which is what NULL eventually comes to) but that is only convention, other values might be used in some circumstances.
So, with "int* number;" you have declared a pointer-to-int but because it is not initialized you have absolutely no idea what value it contains, dereferencing it at this point is undefined behavior - meaning that most anything could happen if you tried doing so, though in reality it will likely simply crash your program.
The problem with:
int** d = (int**)malloc(sizeof(int*));
**d = 6;
is that while d is initialized *d is not. You could do:
*d = malloc(sizeof(int));
or
*d = c;
but *d needs to be pointed at something before you can use **d.
int b
b is an int. We can refer to it by writing b.
b = 7;
Here we assign a number to b.
int* c
c is a pointer that should point to an int. We can refer to that int by writing *c.
c = (int*)malloc(sizeof(int));
We have found a piece of memory that can hold an int, and made a pointer that points to that piece, and assigned it to c. All is well.
*c = 4;
Here we assign a number to *c. See? *c behaves just like b. But that's only because we have initialised it with a valid pointer! Without that, *c = 4; would be invalid.
int** d
d is a pointer that should point to a thing of type int*, which we can refer to by writing *d. That int* thing, in turn, should point to an int, which we can refer to by writing **d.
d = (int**)malloc(sizeof(int*));
We have found a piece of memory that can hold an int*, and made a pointer that points to that piece, and assigned it to d. All is well. Now that int* we call *d, what does it point to?
Nothing. In order to point it to something, we could have found a piece of memory that can hold an int, and made a pointer that points to that piece, and assigned it to our *d, just as we have done earlier with c. See? *d behaves just like c. In order to use *c we had to initialise c with a valid pointer first. In order to use **d we need to initialise *d with a valid pointer first.
*d = (int*)malloc(sizeof(int));
The problem is that you allocate memory for the int* but you don't allocate any memory for the int or set the pointer of the int.
Should be:
int** d = (int**)malloc(sizeof(int*));
*d = (int*)malloc(sizeof(int));
**d=6;
The way I got it is that, when I declare a pointer to, say, int, I create both a variable that'll contain an address (that must be initialized to even operate on the int) and an int variable.
No, when you declare a pointer you create a variable that knows how to contain an address. When you use malloc() you allocate memory. malloc() returns an address that you may assign to your pointer.
P.S. - incrementer(c) should work just fine
Im fairly new to C programming and I am confused as to how pointers work. How do you use ONLY pointers to copy values for example ... use only pointers to copy the value in x into y.
#include <stdio.h>
int main (void)
{
int x,y;
int *ptr1;
ptr1 = &x;
printf("Input a number: \n");
scanf("%d",&x);
y = ptr1;
printf("Y : %d \n",y);
return 0;
}
It is quite simple. & returns the address of a variable. So when you do:
ptr1 = &x;
ptr1 is pointing to x, or holding variable x's address.
Now lets say you want to copy the value from the variable ptr1 is pointing to. You need to use *. When you write
y = ptr1;
the value of ptr1 is in y, not the value ptr1 was pointing to. To put the value of the variable, ptr1 is pointing to, use *:
y = *ptr1;
This will put the value of the variable ptr1 was pointing to in y, or in simple terms, put the value of x in y. This is because ptr1 is pointing to x.
To solve simple issues like this next time, enable all warnings and errors of your compiler, during compilation.
If you're using gcc, use -Wall and -Wextra. -Wall will enable all warnings and -Wextra will turn all warnings into errors, confirming that you do not ignore the warnings.
What's a pointer??
A pointer is a special primitive-type in C. As well as the int type stored decimals, a pointer stored memory address.
How to create pointers
For all types and user-types (i.e. structures, unions) you must do:
Type * pointer_name;
int * pointer_to_int;
MyStruct * pointer_to_myStruct;
How to assing pointers
As I said, i pointer stored memory address, so the & operator returns the memory address of a variable.
int a = 26;
int *pointer1 = &a, *pointer2, *pointer3; // pointer1 points to a
pointer2 = &a; // pointer2 points to a
pointer3 = pointer2; // pointer3 points to the memory address that pointer2 too points, so pointer3 points to a :)
How to use a pointer value
If you want to access to the value of a pointer you must to use the * operator:
int y = *pointer1; // Ok, y = a. So y = 25 ;)
int y = pointer1; // Error, y can't store memory address.
Editing value of a variable points by a pointer
To change the value of a variable through a pointer, first, you must to access to the value and then change it.
*pointer1++; // Ok, a = 27;
*pointer1 = 12; // Ok, a = 12;
pointer1 = 12; // Noo, pointer1 points to the memory address 12. It's a problem and maybe it does crush your program.
pointer1++; // Only when you use pointer and arrays ;).
Long Winded Explanation of Pointers
When explaining what pointers are to people who already know how to program, I find that it's really easy to introduce them using array terminology.
Below all abstraction, your computer's memory is really just a big array, which we will call mem. mem[0] is the first byte in memory, mem[1] is the second, and so forth.
When your program is running, almost all variables are stored in memory somewhere. The way variables are seen in code is pretty simple. Your CPU knows a number which is an index in mem (which I'll call base) where your program's data is, and the actual code just refers to variables using base and an offset.
For a hypothetical bit of code, let's look at this:
byte foo(byte a, byte b){
byte c = a + b;
return c;
}
A naive but good example of what this actually ends up looking like after compiling is something along the lines of:
Move base to make room for three new bytes
Set mem[base+0] (variable a) to the value of a
Set mem[base+1] (variable b) to the value of b
Set mem[base+2] (variable c) to the sum mem[base+0] + mem[base+1]
Set the return value to mem[base+2]
Move base back to where it was before calling the function
The exact details of what happens is platform and convention specific, but will generally look like that without any optimizations.
As the example illustrates, the notion of a b and c being special entities kind of goes out the window. The compiler calculates what offset to give the variables when generating relevant code, but the end result just deals with base and hard-coded offsets.
What is a pointer?
A pointer is just a fancy way to refer to an index within the mem array. In fact, a pointer is really just a number. That's all it is; C just gives you some syntax to make it a little more obvious that it's supposed to be an index in the mem array rather than some arbitrary number.
What a does referencing and dereferencing mean?
When you reference a variable (like &var) the compiler retrieves the offset it calculated for the variable, and then emits some code that roughly means "Return the sum of base and the variable's offset"
Here's another bit of code:
void foo(byte a){
byte bar = a;
byte *ptr = &bar;
}
(Yes, it doesn't do anything, but it's for illustration of basic concepts)
This roughly translates to:
Move base to make room for two bytes and a pointer
Set mem[base+0] (variable a) to the value of a
Set mem[base+1] (variable bar) to the value of mem[base+0]
Set mem[base+2] (variable ptr) to the value of base+1 (since 1 was the offset used for bar)
Move base back to where it had been earlier
In this example you can see that when you reference a variable, the compiler just uses the memory index as the value, rather than the value found in mem at that index.
Now, when you dereference a pointer (like *ptr) the compiler uses the value stored in the pointer as the index in mem. Example:
void foo(byte* a){
byte value = *a;
}
Explanation:
Move base to make room for a pointer and a byte
Set mem[base+0] (variable a) to the value of a
Set mem[base+1] (variable value) to mem[mem[base+0]]
Move base back to where it started
In this example, the compiler uses the value in memory where the index of that value is specified by another value in memory. This can go as deep as you want, but usually only ever goes one or two levels deep.
A few notes
Since referenced variables are really just numbers, you can't reference a reference or assign a value to a reference, since base+offset is the value we get from the first reference, which is not stored in memory, and thus we cannot get the location where that is stored in memory. (&var = value; and &&var are illegal statements). However, you can dereference a reference, but that just puts you back where you started (*&var is legal).
On the flipside, since a dereferenced variable is a value in memory, you can reference a dereferenced value, dereference a dereferenced value, and assign data to a dereferenced variable. (*var = value;, &*var, and **var are all legal statements.)
Also, not all types are one byte large, but I simplified the examples to make it a bit more easy to grasp. In reality, a pointer would occupy several bytes in memory on most machines, but I kept it at one byte to avoid confusing the issue. The general principle is the same.
Summed up
Memory is just a big array I'm calling mem.
Each variable is stored in memory at a location I'm calling varlocation which is specified by the compiler for every variable.
When the computer refers to a variable normally, it ends up looking like mem[varlocation] in the end code.
When you reference the variable, you just get the numerical value of varlocation in the end code.
When you dereference the variable, you get the value of mem[mem[varlocation]] in the code.
tl;dr - To actually answer the question...
//Your variables x and y and ptr
int x, y;
int *ptr;
//Store the location of x (x_location) in the ptr variable
ptr = &x; //Roughly: mem[ptr_location] = x_location;
//Initialize your x value with scanf
//Notice scanf takes the location of (a.k.a. pointer to) x to know where
//to put the value in memory
scanf("%d", &x);
y = *ptr; //Roughly: mem[y_location] = mem[mem[ptr_location]]
//Since 'mem[ptr_location]' was set to the value 'x_location',
//then that line turns into 'mem[y_location] = mem[x_location]'
//which is the same thing as 'y = x;'
Overall, you just missed the star to dereference the variable, as others have already pointed out.
Simply change y = ptr1; to y = *ptr1;.
This is because ptr1 is a pointer to x, and to get the value of x, you have to dereference ptr1 by adding a leading *.
Given pointers to char, one can do the following:
char *s = "data";
As far as I understand, a pointer variable is declared here, memory is allocated for both variable and data, the latter is filled with data\0 and the variable in question is set to point to the first byte of it (i. e. variable contains an address that can be dereferenced). That's short and compact.
Given pointers to int, for example, one can do this:
int *i;
*i = 42;
or that:
int i = 42;
foo(&i); // prefix every time to get a pointer
bar(&i);
baz(&i);
or that:
int i = 42;
int *p = &i;
That's somewhat tautological. It's small and tolerable with one usage of a single variable. It's not with multiple uses of several variables, though, producing code clutter.
Are there any ways to write the same thing dry and concisely? What are they?
Are there any broader-scope approaches to programming, that allow to avoid the issue entirely? May be I should not use pointers at all (joke) or something?
String literals are a corner case : they trigger the creation of the literal in static memory, and its access as a char array. Note that the following doesn't compile, despite 42 being an int literal, because it is not implicitly allocated :
int *p = &42;
In all other cases, you are responsible of allocating the pointed object, be it in automatic or dynamic memory.
int i = 42;
int *p = &i;
Here i is an automatic variable, and p points to it.
int * i;
*i = 42;
You just invoked Undefined Behaviour. i has not been initialized, and is therefore pointing somewhere at random in memory. Then you assigned 42 to this random location, with unpredictable consequences. Bad.
int *i = malloc(sizeof *i);
Here i is initialized to point to a dynamically-allocated block of memory. Don't forget to free(i) once you're done with it.
int i = 42, *p = &i;
And here is how you create an automatic variable and a pointer to it as a one-liner. i is the variable, p points to it.
Edit : seems like you really want that variable to be implicitly and anonymously allocated. Well, here's how you can do it :
int *p = &(int){42};
This thingy is a compound literal. They are anonymous instances with automatic storage duration (or static at file scope), and only exist in C90 and further (but not C++ !). As opposed to string literals, compound literals are mutable, i.e you can modify *p.
Edit 2 : Adding this solution inspired from another answer (which unfortunately provided a wrong explanation) for completeness :
int i[] = {42};
This will allocate a one-element mutable array with automatic storage duration. The name of the array, while not a pointer itself, will decay to a pointer as needed.
Note however that sizeof i will return the "wrong" result, that is the actual size of the array (1 * sizeof(int)) instead of the size of a pointer (sizeof(int*)). That should however rarely be an issue.
int i=42;
int *ptr = &i;
this is equivalent to writing
int i=42;
int *ptr;
ptr=&i;
Tough this is definitely confusing, but during function calls its quite useful as:
void function1()
{
int i=42;
function2(&i);
}
function2(int *ptr)
{
printf("%d",*ptr); //outputs 42
}
here, we can easily use this confusing notation to declare and initialize the pointer during function calls. We don't need to declare pointer globally, and the initialize it during function calls. We have a notation to do both at same time.
int *ptr; //declares the pointer but does not initialize it
//so, ptr points to some random memory location
*ptr=42; //you gave a value to this random memory location
Though this will compile, but it will invoke undefined behaviour as you actually never initialized the pointer.
Also,
char *ptr;
char str[6]="hello";
ptr=str;
EDIT: as pointed in the comments, these two cases are not equivalent.
But pointer points to "hello" in both cases. This example is written just to show that we can initialize pointers in both these ways (to point to hello), but definitely both are different in many aspects.
char *ptr;
ptr="hello";
As, name of string, str is actually a pointer to the 0th element of string, i.e. 'h'.
The same goes with any array arr[], where arr contains the address of 0th element.
you can also think it as array , int i[1]={42} where i is a pointer to int
int * i;
*i = 42;
will invoke undefined behavior. You are modifying an unknown memory location. You need to initialize pointer i first.
int i = 42;
int *p = &i;
is the correct way. Now p is pointing to i and you can modify the variable pointed to by p.
Are there any ways to write the same thing dry and concisely?
No. As there is no pass by reference in C you have to use pointers when you want to modify the passed variable in a function.
Are there any broader-scope approaches to programming, that allow to avoid the issue entirely? May be I should not use pointers at all (joke) or something?
If you are learning C then you can't avoid pointers and you should learn to use it properly.
As I know, when a pointer is passed into a function, it becomes merely a copy of the real pointer. Now, I want the real pointer to be changed without having to return a pointer from a function. For example:
int *ptr;
void allocateMemory(int *pointer)
{
pointer = malloc(sizeof(int));
}
allocateMemory(ptr);
Another thing, which is, how can I allocate memory to 2 or more dimensional arrays? Not by subscript, but by pointer arithmetic. Is this:
int array[2][3];
array[2][1] = 10;
the same as:
int **array;
*(*(array+2)+1) = 10
Also, why do I have to pass in the memory address of a pointer to a function, not the actual pointer itself. For example:
int *a;
why not:
allocateMemory(*a)
but
allocateMemory(a)
I know I always have to do this, but I really don't understand why. Please explain to me.
The last thing is, in a pointer like this:
int *a;
Is a the address of the memory containing the actual value, or the memory address of the pointer? I always think a is the memory address of the actual value it is pointing, but I am not sure about this. By the way, when printing such pointer like this:
printf("Is this address of integer it is pointing to?%p\n",a);
printf("Is this address of the pointer itself?%p\n",&a);
I'll try to tackle these one at a time:
Now, I want the real pointer to be changed without having to return a pointer from a function.
You need to use one more layer of indirection:
int *ptr;
void allocateMemory(int **pointer)
{
*pointer = malloc(sizeof(int));
}
allocateMemory(&ptr);
Here is a good explanation from the comp.lang.c FAQ.
Another thing, which is, how can I allocate memory to 2 or more dimensional arrays?
One allocation for the first dimension, and then a loop of allocations for the other dimension:
int **x = malloc(sizeof(int *) * 2);
for (i = 0; i < 2; i++)
x[i] = malloc(sizeof(int) * 3);
Again, here is link to this exact question from the comp.lang.c FAQ.
Is this:
int array[2][3];
array[2][1] = 10;
the same as:
int **array;
*(*(array+2)+1) = 10
ABSOLUTELY NOT. Pointers and arrays are different. You can sometimes use them interchangeably, however. Check out these questions from the comp.lang.c FAQ.
Also, why do I have to pass in the memory address of a pointer to a function, not the actual pointer itself?
why not:
allocateMemory(*a)
It's two things - C doesn't have pass-by-reference, except where you implement it yourself by passing pointers, and in this case also because a isn't initialized yet - if you were to dereference it, you would cause undefined behaviour. This problem is a similar case to this one, found in the comp.lang.c FAQ.
int *a;
Is a the address of the memory containing the actual value, or the memory address of the pointer?
That question doesn't really make sense to me, but I'll try to explain. a (when correctly initialized - your example here is not) is an address (the pointer itself). *a is the object being pointed to - in this case that would be an int.
By the way, when printing such pointer like this:
printf("Is this address of integer it is pointing to?%p\n",a);
printf("Is this address of the pointer itself?%p\n",&a);
Correct in both cases.
To answer your first question, you need to pass a pointer to a pointer. (int**)
To answer your second question, you can use that syntax to access a location in an existing array.
However, a nested array (int[][]) is not the same as a pointer to a pointer (int**)
To answer your third question:
Writing a passes the value of the variable a, which is a memory address.
Writing *a passes the value pointed to by the variable, which is an actual value, not a memory address.
If the function takes a pointer, that means it wants an address, not a value.
Therefore, you need to pass a, not *a.
Had a been a pointer to a pointer (int**), you would pass *a, not **a.
Your first question:
you could pass a pointer's address:
void allocateMemory(int **pointer) {
*pointer = malloc(sizeof(int));
}
int *ptr;
allocateMemory(&ptr);
or you can return a pointer value:
int *allocateMemory() {
return malloc(sizeof(int));
}
int *ptr = mallocateMemory();
I think you're a little confused about what a pointer actually is.
A pointer is just variable whose value represents an address in memory. So when we say that int *p is pointer to an integer, that just means p is a variable that holds a number that is the memory address of an int.
If you want a function to allocate a buffer of integers and change the value in the variable p, that function needs to know where in memory p is stored. So you have to give it a pointer to p (i.e., the memory address of p), which itself is a pointer to an integer, so what the function needs is a pointer to a pointer to an integer (i.e., a memory address where the function should store a number, which in turn is the memory address of the integers the function allocated), so
void allocateIntBuffer(int **pp)
{
// by doing "*pp = whatever" you're telling the compiler to store
// "whatever" not in the pp variable but in the memory address that
// the pp variable is holding.
*pp = malloc(...);
}
// call it like
int *p;
allocateIntBuffer(&p);
I think the key to your questions is to understand that there is nothing special about pointer variables. A pointer is a variable like any other, only that the value stored in that variable is used to represent a position in memory.
Note that returning a pointer or forcing the caller to move the pointer in an out of a void * temp variable is the only way you can make use of the void * type to allow your function to work with different pointer types. char **, int **, etc. are not convertible to void **. As such, I would advise against what you're trying to do, and instead use the return value for functions that need to update a pointer, unless your function by design only works with a specific type. In particular, simple malloc wrappers that try to change the interface to pass pointer-to-pointer types are inherently broken.