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if *p indicates the value then what does **p or ***p indicate?? Many question in challenges also contain *&p and *p*
3 Answers
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First of all, you should understand how pointers work. A pointer is a variable whose value is the address memory of another variable âthat is, it's position in the computer memory.
Take, for example, this case:
variable i, value 23, address 0x000001
variable *p, value 0x000001, address 0x000002
Now i == 23, p == 0x000001 (this is easy).
The crucial fact here is that *p == 23, because *p means "take the value of p, interpret it as a memory address, and fetch the value of that address". So it is said that *p "points to" i.
The other way around, &p stands for the memory address of p, rather than its value. So &i == 0x000001 and &p == 0x000002.
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int a=0; a is a int value
int *p; p is a pointer (a variable that can contains a int variable adress)
so you can write it :
p = &a; because &var return the adress of var.
Now : *p will return the value of a and &p the adress of p. If you want to store the adress of the p variable, you have to create a pointer for int pointers like this :
int ** p2 = &p;
so &p2 return the adress of p2. And *p2 return p so **p2 return *p = a.
Note that the * can also be used for multiplication. You can for example have this :
int b = **p2 * *p * a * **p2;
= a * a * a * a;