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A Tutorial on Pointers and Arrays in C

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A Tutorial on Pointers and Arrays in C
A Tutorial on Pointers and Arrays in C

A TUTORIAL ON POINTERS AND ARRAYS IN C by Ted Jensen Version 1.1 (HTML version) July 1998
This material is hereby placed in the public domain Available in various formats via http://www.netcom.com/~tjensen/ptr/cpoint.htm

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface Introduction Chapter 1: What is a Pointer? Chapter 2: Pointer Types and Arrays. Chapter 3: Pointers and Strings Chapter 4: More on Strings Chapter 5: Pointers and Structures Chapter 6: More on Strings and Arrays of Strings Chapter 7: More on Multi-Dimensional Arrays Chapter 8: Pointers to Arrays Chapter 9: Pointers and Dynamic Allocation of Memory Chapter 10: Pointers to Functions

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A Tutorial on Pointers and Arrays in C

Epilog

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Preface

PREFACE
This document is intended to introduce pointers to beginning programmers in the C programming language. Over several years of reading and contributing to various conferences on C including those on the FidoNet and UseNet, I have noted a large number of newcomers to C appear to have a difficult time in grasping the fundamentals of pointers. I therefore undertook the task of trying to explain them in plain language with lots of examples. The first version of this document was placed in the public domain, as is this one. It was picked up by Bob Stout who included it as a file called PTR-HELP.TXT in his widely distributed collection of SNIPPETS. Since that original 1995 release, I have added a significant amount of material and made some minor corrections in the original work. In this HTML version 1.1 I 've made a number of minor changes to the wording as a result of comments emailed to me from around the world.

Acknowledgements:
There are so many people who



References: for Chapter 10: 1. "Algorithms in C" Robert Sedgewick Addison-Wesley ISBN 0-201-51425-7 Continue with Pointer Tutorial Back to Table of Contents file:///E|/My%20eBooks/_ESSENTIALS_/A%20Tutorial...ointers%20and%20Arrays%20in%20C/Chapter%2010.htm (13 of 13)3/18/2007 12:09:52 AM Epilog EPILOG I have written the preceding material to provide an introduction to pointers for newcomers to C. In C, the more one understands about pointers the greater flexibility one has in the writing of code. The above expands on my first effort at this which was entitled ptr_help.txt and found in an early version of Bob Stout 's collection of C code SNIPPETS. The content in this version has been updated from that in PTRTUTOT.ZIP included in SNIP9510.ZIP. I am always ready to accept constructive criticism on this material, or review requests for the addition of other relevant material. Therefore, if you have questions, comments, criticisms, etc. concerning that which has been presented, I would greatly appreciate your contacting me via email me at tjensen@ix. netcom.com. Back to Table of Contents file:///E|/My%20eBooks/_ESSENTIALS_/A%20Tutorial%20on%20Pointers%20and%20Arrays%20in%20C/Epilog.htm3/18/2007 12:09:52 AM

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