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Foundations · easy

1. Pointers and Memory Addresses

Direct memory references and dereferencing.

1 min read2 questionsup to 50 XPtopic 1/4

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A pointer is a variable holding the memory address of another value. The `&` operator obtains an address; the `*` operator dereferences it.

c
int x = 42;
int *p = &x;
*p = 100; // x is now 100

All low-level hardware drivers, kernel ABIs, and high-performance VMs are written around raw pointer arithmetic.

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Check your understanding

  1. 1. What does the unary '&' operator do in C?

  2. 2. What does '*p' do when p is an int* pointer?

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