What does the indirection operator do?
Pointer:
Pointer, the name itself references the purpose of the pointer. Pointers point to a location in memory.
- Pointer is a special type of variable to store the address of the memory location, which can be accessed later.
- If an asterisk “*” operator is present before the variable, then that variable is referred as pointer variable.
- Pointer is just a type of variable that stores the addresses of other variables.
- Using pointers, we can access the address of a variable; the data stored in that variable can be retrieved.
Syntax of pointer variable declaration:
<variable-type> *<variable-name>;
Example for pointer variable declaration:
//definition of pointer variable
int *ptrvar;
Where,
- “int” is the variable type.
- “*ptrvar” is the pointer variable name.
Explanation of Solution
Indirection operator:
An asterisk “*” is also referred as indirection operator which is used to dereferences the pointer.
Consider the following statements
//declare variable x
//assign the value 7 to y
int y = 2;
//declare pointer variable
//store the address of y in ptrvar
int *ptrvar = &y;
Here, the variable “y” is pointed by the pointer variable “ptrvar”. And “ptrvar” is used to change the value of the variable “y”.
- Hence, the user can work with the value the pointer is pointing to.
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