Types and Pointers and Memory


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Typecasting

Every value in C has a type, but you can cast one value into another type if you want (with some constraints).

int x_hex = 0x01; // You can assign vars with hex literals

// Casting between types will attempt to preserve their numeric values
printf("%d\n", x_hex); // => Prints 1
printf("%d\n", (short) x_hex); // => Prints 1
printf("%d\n", (char) x_hex); // => Prints 1

// Types will overflow without warning
printf("%d\n", (unsigned char) 257); // => 1 (Max char = 255 if char is 8 bits long)

// For determining the max value of a `char`, a `signed char` and an `unsigned char`,
// respectively, use the CHAR_MAX, SCHAR_MAX and UCHAR_MAX macros from <limits.h>

// Integral types can be cast to floating-point types, and vice-versa.
printf("%f\n", (float)100); // %f formats a float
printf("%lf\n", (double)100); // %lf formats a double
printf("%d\n", (char)100.0);

Pointers

A pointer is a variable declared to store a memory address. Its declaration will also tell you the type of data it points to. You can retrieve the memory address of your variables, then mess with them.

int x = 0;
printf("%p\n", (void *)&x); // Use & to retrieve the address of a variable
// (%p formats an object pointer of type void *)
// => Prints some address in memory;

// Pointers start with * in their declaration:
int *px, not_a_pointer; // px is a pointer to an int
px = &x; // Stores the address of x in px
printf("%p\n", (void *)px); // => Prints some address in memory
printf("%zu, %zu\n", sizeof(px), sizeof(not_a_pointer));
// => Prints "8, 4" on a typical 64-bit system

To retrieve the value at the address a pointer is pointing to, put * in front to dereference it.
(Yes, it may be confusing that * is used for both declaring a pointer and dereferencing it.)

printf("%d\n", *px); // => Prints 0, the value of x

You can also change the value the pointer is pointing to.
We'll have to wrap the dereference in parenthesis because ++ has a higher precedence than *.

(*px)++; // Increment the value px is pointing to by 1
printf("%d\n", *px); // => Prints 1
printf("%d\n", x); // => Prints 1

// Arrays are a good way to allocate a contiguous block of memory
int x_array[20]; //declares array of size 20 (cannot change size)
int xx;
for (xx = 0; xx < 20; xx++) {
  x_array[xx] = 20 - xx;
} // Initialize x_array to 20, 19, 18,... 2, 1

//Declare a pointer of type int and initialize it to point to x_array:  
int* x_ptr = x_array;`

x_ptr now points to the first element in the array (the integer 20).
This works because arrays often decay into pointers to their first element. For example, when an array is passed to a function or is assigned to a pointer, it decays into (implicitly converted to) a pointer.

Exceptions: when the array is the argument of the & (address-of) operator:

int arr[10];
int (*ptr_to_arr)[10] = &arr; // &arr is NOT of type `int *`!
// It's of type "pointer to array" (of ten `int`s).
// or when the array is a string literal used for initializing a char array:
char otherarr[] = "foobarbazquirk";
//...or when it's the argument of the `sizeof` or `alignof` operator:
int arraythethird[10];
int *ptr = arraythethird; // equivalent with int *ptr = &arr[0];
printf("%zu, %zu\n", sizeof arraythethird, sizeof ptr); // probably prints "40, 4" or "40, 8"

Pointers are incremented and decremented based on their type (this is called pointer arithmetic):

printf("%d\n", *(x_ptr + 1)); // => Prints 19
printf("%d\n", x_array[1]); // => Prints 19

Strings

Strings are arrays of char, but they are usually represented as a pointer-to-char (which is a pointer to the first element of the array).
It's good practice to use const char * when referring to a string literal, since string literals shall not be modified (i.e. "foo"[0] = 'a' is ILLEGAL.)

const char *my_str = "This is my very own string literal";
printf("%c\n", *my_str); // => 'T'

This is not the case if the string is an array (potentially initialized with a string literal) that resides in writable memory, as in:

char foo[] = "foo";
foo[0] = 'a'; // this is legal, foo now contains "aoo"

malloc

You can also dynamically allocate contiguous blocks of memory with the standard library function malloc, which takes one argument of type size_t representing the number of bytes to allocate (usually from the heap, although this may not be true on e.g. embedded systems - the C standard says nothing about it).

int *my_ptr = malloc(sizeof(*my_ptr) * 20);
for (xx = 0; xx < 20; xx++) {
  *(my_ptr + xx) = 20 - xx; // my_ptr[xx] = 20-xx
} // Initialize memory to 20, 19, 18, 17... 2, 1 (as ints)

  // Dereferencing memory that you haven't allocated gives
  // "unpredictable results" - the program is said to invoke "undefined behavior"
printf("%d\n", *(my_ptr + 21)); // => Prints who-knows-what? It may even crash.

When you're done with a malloc'd block of memory, you need to free it, or else no one else can use it until your program terminates (this is called a "memory leak"):

free(my_ptr);
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