Question

Computer Science Midterm Exam Review Questions

11. What is a pointer?

12. Are pointers and array names the same thing? How are they alike? How do they differ?

Answer 1

11

Ans:

Pointer: Pointer is variable which stores the address of a variable .

Ex:

int num=10;

int *ptr=&num ; // it means here ptr is a pointer variable and we are storing address of num in this pointer variable

Ex:

int a[10];

int *ptr=a; // here ptr is a pointer variable and we are storing the base address of array in this array variable.

12

Ans:

Yes we can assume that both pointers and array names are same thing.

But sometimes we use array names and some times we use pointer to that array

Ex:

If we want to interate through the array in the main function then

for(i=0;i<n;i++)

printf("%d",a[i]); // here this a[i] prints all elements of array;

If we want to pass the array to some function and we have to print array values then we use pointers

void printing(int *arr,int arr_len)

int i=0;

for(i=0;i<arr_len;i++)

printf("%d",(arr+i)*); // here it will print array values

int main()
int a[10],n=10;

printing(a,n);