Pointers are a fundamental and powerful feature in C programming that provide a way to directly access memory and manipulate data. They are variables designed to store the memory address of another variable, offering a level of control that enables efficient and dynamic data management.

Pointer Basics

A pointer in C is declared with a specific data type and uses the asterisk symbol * as a prefix. The data type of a pointer defines the type of data the pointer will reference. Here's a basic syntax for declaring a pointer:

In this example, pointerVariable is a pointer of type int. It's important to note that pointers in C are not initialized to any default value — they point to some random memory address, which is why they should be initialized before use to avoid undefined behavior.

Pointer Initialization and Dereferencing