Pointer Question

It's programming language for manipulating data....

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10560523/difference-of-sizeof-between-char-x-and-char-x

https://cboard.cprogramming.com/c-programming/150272-difference-between-char*-x-char-*x.html

https://computer.howstuffworks.com/c35.htm

char* is a pointer to the first char in the return "string" (char array). although the size of the array isn't given, in C "string"s are null terminated. meaning you can start reading the chars of the position the pointer is set to until you encounter a null char('\0').

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9995889/what-does-char-do-or-mean-as-a-return-type-for-a-function

In C, different types of data have different size. For example, a character may take 1 byte, a short integer 2 bytes, a regular integer 4 bytes, a floating point number 4 bytes, etc. You have to tell the compiler what kind of number a variable is so that storage can be arranged.

You can also have a null pointer, which tells the compiler that the variable is a pointer which you can assign a size later. If x is a null pointer, you can change it to a char pointer with (char*)x.

To declare x as a character pointer, you assign it as char *x.

If you want to find the address of a variable x, the use &x. To make that address an address to store a character, cast it as a character pointer (char*)&x.

I hope this helps...

The stack is a place in memory where the computer stores temporary data, for example, its current address and variables it is working on when interrupted to do another task. It's usually a program error that causes this area to fill up, hence "stack overflow".

A pointer is a variable that holds an address. The address can be a character, character string, number, structure, etc. An array is a group of characters, numbers, etc. C refers to arrays by their addresses so that it doesn't have to move a lot of data around, hence the confusion between pointers and arrays.

pedro54 is a spam bot....haha

char* x, char *x,char*x, (char*) x and (char *) x all mean the same, declaring x as a variable of type address, the address being the address of some other variable. &x is the address of the variable x, so you could meaningfully write

char* y = &x;

I hope it is then clear that (char*) &x is not meaningful, as the & itself declares an address.

The bracketed forms are used when "casting", i.e. assigning the value of a variable to another variable of a different but compatible type, e.g.

char* x[] = "ABCD";

char* y = &x; /* the address of x, being that cell in RAM where the A is stored */

int z = (int) y; /* the integer value of the address of x */

char* a = (char*) z; /* a now holds the address of x, and is equal to y */