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iOS Objective-C Basics (Retired) Pointers and Memory Structs

Ryan Jin
Ryan Jin
15,337 Points
Posted by Ryan Jin
Ryan Jin
15,337 Points

Why it is *c

Why it is *c for an array. I thought float *c is a pointer that points to a float variable

Stepan Ulyanin
Stepan Ulyanin
11,318 Points
Stepan Ulyanin
Stepan Ulyanin
11,318 Points

Because in C along with C++ and some other languages the array name is a pointer to the memory address of the first element of the array;

int my_array[3] = {1, 2, 3}; // creates an array

printf("%04x", array); //will print the memory address of my_array[0] which is 1

that's why they pass the pointer to a float which is the first element of the array, coming from there you can just use the subscript operator to de-reference it (c[0] or c[1]) - [ ] is the subscript operator and it will display the value that is stored at the memory address connected to the array through the pointer;

I hope it helps!