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Prerequisite: Pointer in C and C++, Double Pointer (Pointer to Pointer) in C
A pointer is used to point to a memory location of a variable. A pointer stores the address of a variable and the value of a variable can be accessed using dereferencing of the pointer.
A pointer is generally initialized as:
datatype *variable name;
This above declaration is a single pointer but there can be more than this. This is called levels of pointers. According to ANSI C, each compiler must have at least 12 levels of pointers. This means we can use 12 * symbols with a variable name.
:
Level of pointers or say chain can go up to N level depending upon the memory size. If you want to create a pointer of level-5, you need to precede the pointer variable name by 5 asterisks(*) at the time of declaration.
Syntax:
// level-1 pointer declaration datatype *pointer; // level-2 pointer declaration datatype **pointer; // level-3 pointer declaration datatype ***pointer; . . and so on
The level of the pointer depends on how many asterisks the pointer variable is preceded with at the time of declaration.
Declaration:
int *pointer_1; int **pointer_2; int ***pointer_3; . . and so on
Below are the programs to illustrate the various level of pointers:
Program 1:
Value of variable var = 10 Value of variable var using pointer ptr1 = 10 Value of variable var using pointer ptr2 = 10 Value of variable var using pointer ptr3 = 10
Program 2:
Value of var = 23.564327 Value of var using level-1 pointer = 23.564327 Value of var using level-2 pointer = 23.564327 Value of var using level-3 pointer = 23.564327 Value of var using level-4 pointer = 23.564327
Explanation:
The above code where we have taken float data type of the variable, so now we have to take the same data type for the chain of pointers too. As the pointer and the variable, it is pointing to should have the same data type.
Program 3:
Before: Value of var = 10 Value of var using level-1 pointer = 10 Value of var using level-2 pointer = 10 Value of var using level-3 pointer = 10 After: Value of var = 35 Value of var using level-1 pointer = 35 Value of var using level-2 pointer = 35 Value of var using level-3 pointer = 35
Explanation:
As we already know that a pointer points to address the location of a variable so when we access the value of a pointer that points to the variable's value. Now to update the value of the variable, we can use any level of pointer as ultimately every pointer is directly or indirectly pointing to that variable only. It will directly change the value present at the address location of the variable.